About $10.4 billion will be spent by international travellers visiting Dubai, the eighth highest expenditure in the world, a report said.

The spending by travellers in New York, one of the most expensive cities, is forecast to hit $18.59 billion this year, according to a report in the Gulf News quoting the latest MasterCard Index. Second on the list is London, with $16.3 billion, followed by Paris, Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo.

The figures were reached using government-sourced actual data on cross-border transactions by visitors flying into the different cities and not based on MasterCard volumes or transactional data, it added.

“All the data were collected by different national governments and reported to the Bank for International Settlements. If a visitor buys an air ticket at home using the local currency, that’s not included in the count. The moment the visitor reaches the destination city and uses foreign currency to pay for any transaction, that is what’s being counted,” explained Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, global economic adviser for MasterCard and author of the report.