Methodology

We selected the top 30 cities in the world with the highest number of overnight international visits (as described by the Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index). For each of these, we found the population, then, using TripAdvisor, we found the number of theatres, museums, art galleries, and concert halls.

Michelin star restaurants were found using the Michelin Guide, while the annual tourism spend was drawn from the Mastercard source on tourism.

Once we had complete data, we assigned each a score between 1 and 10. These scores were then included in a calculation that assigned different values to different metrics, based on how valuable we considered them to our final result.

We used this valuation and their score to form an overall score out of ten across all metrics. This was then used to rank the locations.

All research is effective as at 6 December 2016.

Sources