A British newspaper lists "the world's 20 most visited cities":

Bangkok is 2nd.
Phuket is 16th.
Pattaya is 20th.

Personally, if this were true, I think Pattaya would be a lot busier than it already is. But I'm only guessing.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/galleries/Top-20-most-visited-cities/

 

It must be a must see place,beautiful scenery,beaches,paradise on earth.

I think TAT has has something to do with this survey.

regards Worgeordie

More than Berlin, Las Vegas, LA, San Francisco? I think Rio has had quite a few visitors in 2016 with the Olympic Games. I don't believe the figures about Pattaya or Phuket.

bangkok 2?  Iatanbul top 10?  I can imagine Bangkok if you count BKK as a travel hub

Bangkok is no1 on this list (2016) with most overnight visitors with over 21mill, beating London that had just under 20mill.

 

http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2015-06-03/the-10-most-visited-cities-of-2015-london-bangkok-new-york

The Telegraph piece was done by a company called Euromonitor.

They would have been paid for that report so quite often that company will have an agenda & want results sqewed to suit that agenda.

The CNN report was by mastercard & would most likely just reflect people using mastercard & not the actual amount of people who actually travelled.

Immigration figures would be the best indicators of a countries visitors because a lot of hotels in some places under declare their turnover but these can be manipulated as well.

Visa runs would have effect although probably small but sometimes it just suits to have inflated figures so for example you could just take your busiest day of the year & multiply it by 365 to come up with a yearly figure.

Something that goverments, media & CEOs globally have been doing for years to suit their purposes.

If the Bangkok on the beach weekend visitors are counted the rank might be OK.

But is this comparable to other tourist statistics?

 

Perhaps we are all underestimating the massive impact of Chinese tourism. On the beach some days it's like the Normandy landings (without the machine gun fire).