London and New York were again the most visited cities by European business travelers in 2019. With a mature business travel market like Europe, it is not surprising that the composition and ranking of the top 10 most frequented European cities has barely changed. London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Madrid and Milan maintained their previous year’s positions in 2019.
There were only two changes in position: Paris and Zurich swapped places in the ranking of the BCD Travel 2019 Cities & Trends Report. The French capital falls back to 5th place. The Swiss metropolis moves up to fourth place. The negative effects caused by the yellow vest protests in France could be a reason for this development. In addition, Frankfurt loses its place in the top 10 to Stockholm. This is possibly related to the slowdown in economic growth in Germany.
There has been a little more movement in intercontinental travel destinations, although the cities that made it into the top 10 rankings are the same as last year. New York and Shanghai again occupy the first two places. Three cities are moving up: San Francisco (+2), Chicago (+1), Tokyo (+1). Things are going down for Beijing (-2), Dubai (-1) and Singapore (-1).
San Francisco moves up from 5th to 3rd place, pushing Singapore and Dubai down one rank each. The capacity of airlines can be one of the reasons: in the last year, the number of direct flights available between EMEA (mainly Europe) and San Francisco increased by 8% and the number of seats increased by 9%.
Beijing loses two places, slipping from 6 to 8. This could be due to the slowdown in Chinese economic growth and the US-China trade conflict, which had a negative impact on business travel by US companies operating out of EMEA.
The UK remained the most popular destination for European business travelers in 2019, followed by Germany and Spain. The USA, China and India were also able to maintain their top positions as the most visited intercontinental destinations, which in turn illustrates the strong trade relations between Europe and the Chinese economy as well as India. (TI)
