London has been ousted by its rival Paris as Europe’s most-popular tourist city for the first time in at least a decade, according to figures published today. most popular tourist city in Europe

London was the only city on the current top 10 that saw a visitor decline year-over-year — a nearly 4% drop.

The UK capital attracted 19.09 million foreign visitors who stayed at least one night in 2018, down 3.7 per cent from a record 19.83 million the previous year.

Over the same period, the number of people visiting Paris shot up by almost 10 per cent.

The data, compiled for Mastercard’s Global Cities Index, which ranks 200 major destinations, is another setback for London’s embattled tourism sector.

The chaos over Brexit has also been a factor as the number of visitors from the EU fell by 750,000 last year. Meanwhile, the City of Light has benefited from the global surge in Chinese tourism, in part due to easier visa arrangements.

Tourists Boost Economies, Strain Infrastructure

However, the record influx has also brought problems to the French capital, with authorities forced to introduce “traffic-control” measures at the Louvre to cope with the 10 million annual visitors. The deputy mayor of Paris has also said tourism buses are “no longer welcome” in the city centre.

London also still heads the European table for tourism spending last year with $16.47 billion (£13.5 billion), ahead of Paris’s $14.1 billion (£11.6 billion). London’s figure is forecast to grow 4.6 per cent to £13.78 billion in 2019, boosted by the near 20 per cent fall in the value of the pound since the referendum.

The average stay in London last year was almost six nights. More than four in five visitors to London travelled for leisure while less than a fifth visited for business reasons. Visitors spend an average of £99.22 per day.

For the fourth year in a row, Bangkok is the No. 1 most popular city on Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index. most popular tourist city in Europe