Five years after the pandemic, city tourism has split in two. Asia and the Gulf have blown past their 2019 levels — Mecca’s foreign Umrah pilgrims are up 127%, Tokyo’s foreign visitors up 63%, Bangkok roughly a third above its pre-pandemic count. Europe’s giants, meanwhile, still haven’t caught up: London’s inbound visits remain about 4% below 2019, and even Paris — despite its Olympic year — sits roughly 2% under its pre-pandemic record.
International visitors: latest year vs. 2019
The data
| City | Region | vs 2019 | 2019 | Latest | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mecca | Gulf | +127% | 7.46 M | 16.92 M (2024) | foreign Umrah pilgrims |
| Tokyo | Asia | +63% | 15.18 M | 24.79 M (2024) | foreign travelers |
| Bangkok* | Asia | +33% | 22.7 M | 30.3 M (2025) | international arrivals (city) |
| Dubai | Gulf | +17% | 16.73 M | 19.59 M (2025) | international overnight visitors |
| Chennai | Asia | +1% | 0.78 M | 0.79 M (2024) | FTAs via Chennai airport |
| Paris (Île-de-France) | Europe | -2% | ≈23.1 M | 22.6 M (2024) | international tourists, region |
| London | Europe | -4% | 21.7 M | 20.9 M (2024) | inbound overseas visits |
Download: since_2019_2026.csv — with sources and caveat notes per row.
What changed
- Religious travel is the biggest structural shift. Saudi Arabia more than doubled foreign Umrah pilgrims (7.46 → 16.92 million) as Vision-2030 capacity expansion took hold — the largest gain of any destination we track.
- Japan is the new gravity centre of city tourism. A weak yen and expanded flight capacity pushed Tokyo 63% above 2019 — the strongest growth of any conventional destination in the cohort.
- Europe’s stagnation is structural, not cyclical. London and Paris both grew ~3% in 2024 — but from holes deep enough that neither has regained 2019. The growth story has moved east.
- Chennai shows the flat middle: back to 2019 levels almost to the decimal (+0.9%) — recovery without expansion.
Methodology
Each city is compared on its own official metric (documented per row); we only include cities whose 2019 baseline is cleanly sourced — Guangzhou, Da Nang and Ha Long were left out because we could not verify official 2019 city-level baselines to our standard. Paris’s 2019 value is derived from the CRT’s own statement that 2024 was 2% below 2019. Bangkok mixes index vendors (Mastercard 2019, Euromonitor 2025) and is marked accordingly. Sources: Methodology · Most Visited Cities · Fastest-Growing Destinations.
More TN Cities data stories
- Tourists per Resident — which cities carry the most tourism pressure.
- The Fastest-Growing City Destinations — year-on-year growth from official statistics.
- The Most Visited Cities Nobody Writes About — Johor, Zhuhai, Batam & Muğla — travel’s invisible giants.
- Religious Travel Giants — Mecca, Medina, Karbala and the Kumbh in numbers.
- The World’s Most Visited Cities — the master table: official arrivals per city with metric, year and source.
Changelog
- 2026-09-01: First edition, 7 cities with verified 2019 baselines.