Nairobi falls behind Entebbe among most visited cities
Nairobi had fewer visitors as compared to Entebbe in the last eight months, a report by global payments and technology firm has revealed.
Entebbe, which is located 37km from Uganda’s capital city Kampala, had 616,700 visitors compared to Nairobi which had 323,859 between January and August this year.
According the Mastercard Worldwide 2016 Global Destination Cities Index, South Africa’s commercial capital, Johannesburg, remained the most visited city on the continent with 3.6 million visitors mainly from Europe.
Cairo was second with 1.55 million visitors followed by Cape town (1.37 million), Casablanca (1.05 million), Durban (831,051 ), Accra ( 761,872 ), Lagos (711,209 ), Entebbe (616,700), Dakar (590,478) and Nairobi (323,859) visitors.
Other cities in the survey are Tunis with 279,934 visitors, Maputo (199,928) and Mozambique’s city of Beira which had 9,725 visitors.
INTERNATIONAL FORUMS
Nairobi’s 10th place as the most visited city in Africa partly underlines the impact of growing global and regional business forums in the capital.
Last year, Nairobi cashed in on international forums and visits by global leaders among them outgoing US President Barack Obama who attended the sixth Global Entrepreneurship Summit in July 2015.
“Looking deeper into this measurement, the growth trajectories of many of the global destination cities are dynamic and increasingly diverse, as many of them tapped into new sources of growth (feeder cities),” the report said.
The Mastercard Worldwide 2016 Global Destination Cities Index 2016 ranked 132 most visited cities around the world with focus being on the volume of visitors, expenditure estimates, the overnight international visitor arrivals and their cross border spending to understand how people travel and spend around the world.
