San Jose, Costa Rica [TCRN] – The MasterCard Global Destinations Cities Index 2012, a second annual report that analyzes both visitor traffic and cross-border travel spend in 132 cities around the globe, was unveiled on Monday, June 11th, ranking San Jose as the sixth most important destination city in Latin America.
San Jose Costa Rica has seen a phenomenal growth curve in the past 45 years. San Jose hotels, attractions, restaurants, and casinos have all seen significant increases in visitors.
Authored by Dr. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, Global Economic Advisor for MasterCard Worldwide, the report ranks the world’s leading destination cities and demonstrates the interconnectivity among those cities.
According to the report, the 1.3 million visitors predicted to arrive in San Jose during the year will spend an estimate of $1.3 billions. This excludes passengers returning to arrival country and includes on non-stop flights only.
Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Lima and Bogota ranked above San Jose in that order respectively. Rio de Janeiro, Santo Domingo, Caracas, and Quito make up the rest of the top ten based on visitor spend.
However, Quito showed the most growth rate out of all Latin American cities at 26, 3%. This is followed by Bogota at 24, 8%, Rio de Janeiro at %16, 1 and San Jose at 15%.
In the global ranking, San Jose obtained the 15th position among the world’s top 20 fastest growing destination cities by visitor cross-border spending.
The growth figures for Latin America show real signs of positivity, with projected visitor numbers up by 7.3% for the top ten destination cities in the region and total predictions for international spend growth at 7.9%.‘
‘In spite of a challenging global economic backdrop, this year’s Index projects that there are hotspots of robust growth around the globe, in terms of both international visitor arrivals and expenditure,” said Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong.
“It is important to understand the role Latin American cities play when taking a look at global commerce and how electronic payments enable international travelers to make safe, simple and smart payments anywhere in the world,” said Richard Hartzell, President, MasterCard Latin America and Caribbean region.
“This Index indicates that Latin America and the Caribbean are attracting more international travelers and we want to help facilitate the growth of cashless commerce,” he added.
The MasterCard Worldwide Index of Global Destination Cities is compiled using international flight and flight capacity information purchased from OAG Global, a provider of international aviation data. Flight schedules are also used for calculating flight frequency between pairs of cities. Airlines also publish on a regular basis their historical load factor, and advance flight schedules, which are then used to estimate the actual outbound passenger departures, and for forecasting outbound passenger departures in the coming year.
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