Sofia is Second in Europe by Foreign Visitors Growth in 2017

Sofia ranks second in Europe by growth of foreign visitors in 2017, according to Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index. The ranking is based on a comparison between the number of visitors in a given year with the number of visitors in the previous year. With a growth of 15.2% compared to 2016, the Bulgarian capital ranked immediately after Istanbul (16.8%) and some of the most popular tourist destinations on the continent, such as Lisbon (14.6%), Paris (13.1% %), Munich (12.9%) and Warsaw (12.3%).

Furthermore, Mastercard’s ranking also compared cities in terms of number of international overnight arrivals for the period 2009-2017. Here Sofia ranked fifth in Europe with an average annual growth rate of 9%, right after Bucharest (10.3%), Lisbon (10.6%), Minsk (10%) and Santa Cruz de -la-Palma (9.3%).

The most visited city in 2017 was Bangkok, welcoming just over 20 million tourists. The other cities in TOP 5 were London, Paris, Dubai, and Singapore.

This year, Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index added 30 more destinations to its large-scale survey, so the number of cities in the list grew to 162. The index is much more than a prestigious ranking of tourist destinations as the analysis also presents a growth forecast for 2018, key figures for the fastest growing destinations, and a deeper understanding of why people are traveling, as well as the amount and type of costs they have in different countries.

For more information please visit newsroom.mastercard.com