Oxford Economics’ forecasts help us quantify the impact of new initiatives, stress-test our assumptions, and confidently prioritise investments that support Abu Dhabi’s long-term tourism strategy.
Travel Data & Forecasting
Travel Demand and Spending, City by City
Global City Travel brings inbound and outbound travel demand and visitor spending into focus for hundreds of cities worldwide.
Travel Intelligence at the City Level
Global City Travel (GCT) delivers detailed inbound and outbound travel data for hundreds of cities worldwide, both international and domestic: visits, overnight stays, and spending, with decades of historical data and forward-looking 10-year forecasts. See not just how many people travel to a market, but where they go and what they spend.
Cities are where travel concentrates, and understanding them is central to travel and investment strategy. GCT covers all major hub and gateway cities, accounting for half of global activity. The service unlocks key layers of insight for teams to leverage.
What you can do:
- Compare cities on a like-for-like basis: demand, seasonality, origin markets, and spend
- Understand travel from origin-destination country to city and city to country
- Track where visitors to each city come from, across the top origin countries and world regions
- See visitor spending by category, for both international and domestic travel
- Explore ready-made dashboards with built-in executive summaries, or filter for your own views
Plan at the City Level
See What Visitors Spend, Not Just How Many Arrive
Global City Travel breaks visitor spending into categories: accommodation, food and beverage, retail, local transport, and recreation, for both international and domestic travel at the city level. Because the spending mix varies widely from one city to the next, this detail helps focus strategy and investment where the economic return is greatest.
Grounded in Globally Recognized Economic Modelling
Global City Travel leverages multiple complementary data sources, including official statistics, air passenger flows, and hotel demand, alongside proprietary economic and demographic data for each city. Ten-year forecasts are built on the Oxford Economics Global Economic Model, a globally recognized framework. As an independent, third-party research firm, Tourism Economics has no stake in the outcome, so the analysis stays objective.
One View, Sharper Decisions
Benchmark and Compare Cities
Put cities side by side on demand, origin markets, and spend to see where you stand and where to focus.
Target the Right Source Markets
Track which origin countries and regions feed each city to sharpen marketing, routes, and capacity.
Prioritize Investment and Growth
Direct strategy and investment toward the cities and spend categories with the strongest momentum or opportunity.
What’s Inside the Service
Global City Travel provides comparable indicators for every city it covers, including:
- Visits & nights: Overnight visits and nights for each city, by top origin countries, world regions, and domestic travel.
- Departures: Outbound visits and nights from each city to destination countries and world regions.
- Travel spending: Inbound and outbound spend by category: accommodation, food and beverage, retail, local transport, and recreation.
- City dashboards: Interactive, visual analysis for each city.
- Economic & demographic drivers: Top-line indicators behind each city’s outlook.
Plus, access a web-based data workstation, an Excel add-in, heat-map visualization, exports, economist support, and event-driven research briefings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Global City Travel (GCT) is a subscription service providing city-level travel data and forecasts for hundreds of cities worldwide. It covers inbound and outbound travel, both international and domestic, including visits, overnight stays, and spending by category, with historical data from 2000 and 10-year forecasts.
The Global Travel Service covers travel at the country level. Global City Travel brings the same forward-looking approach down to the city, showing demand and spending within and across individual markets. Many clients use the two together. For international travel into US states specifically, see International State Travel.
No. Rather than city-to-city pairs, GCT measures travel from origin-destination country to city and city to country. This shows which markets feed a city and where a city’s residents travel outbound to.
GCT breaks visitor spending into accommodation, food and beverage, retail, local transport, and recreation, for both international and domestic travel at the city level, so you can compare how spending patterns differ across cities.
GCT combines official statistics, air passenger flows, hotel demand, and economic and demographic data, with forecasts built on the Oxford Economics global model. Historical data runs from the year 2000, and the service is updated quarterly.