Euromonitor, a British company specialising in market research and consumer trends, ranked Paris in first place in its yearly report on ‘best tourist destinations in the world’. 

The study took into account 55 different elements revolving around themes of economic and commercial performance, tourist infrastructure, policies aimed at developing the tourism sector, health and security, as well as sustainability.

Behind Paris, Dubai took second place, Madrid took third, Tokyo was fourth, and Amsterdam came in fifth.

New York and London were further down on the ranking, in 8th and 10th place respectively.

According to Euromonitor, the French capital maintained a “balanced performance between domestic and international tourism”, noting that the city was expected to record more than 15 million international visits in 2023.

The report also added that in 2024, “the Olympic Games will boost international arrivals in Paris.”

In 2022, Paris ranked in first place, again one step ahead of Dubai, the largest city in the UAE which is actually expected to have welcomed more global visitors (16 million) than Paris in 2023. 

READ MORE: ‘Avoid the Eiffel Tower’ – What to see if you’re visiting Paris for just one day

Why do people love visiting Paris?

From museums to beautiful river views and tasty restaurants, there are plenty of reasons people love visiting Paris (including fresh bread on almost every corner).

However, a research by France’s national cinema body recently found that four out of every of five foreign tourists to Paris got an urge to visit after seeing a movie or TV series filmed in the capital.

For one out of 10, it was their main reason for coming, and in half of those cases it was the Netflix series Emily in Paris (38 percent) and Lupin (11 percent) that spurred the trip.

Based on other metrics, including the increased city revenue from the tourist tax, Paris also saw a rise in visits in 2023 – although across the world tourism was badly disrupted in 2020, 2021 and 2022 by the pandemic.

In 2023, AirBnB paid the city of Paris €31.7 million, compared to €24.3 million in 2022 and €9.4 million in 2021. 

“Paris is regaining its attractiveness, which had been somewhat lost since Covid,” Clément Eulry, the new general director of Airbnb in France, told Le Parisien. 

“The Rugby World Cup also accelerated this trend,” Eulry told the French daily. 

During a press conference over the summer, Paris’ deputy mayor in charge of tourism, Frédéric Hocquard, announced that there had been a 27.2 percent increase in the number people who visited the greater Paris area from January to April 2023 when compared with the same period in 2022.

Overall, local authorities said that French tourism had returned to pre-pandemic levels, but Paris had been lagged behind, in part because a lot of its tourists have traditionally come from the US, China and Japan, which were among the last countries in the world to lift Covid-related travel restrictions.

In the first half of 2023, the largest bloc of foreign tourists came from the United States, at 13 percent, which was followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Brazil.

Overall, the French tourist industry accounts for 9.7 percent of the country’s GDP, but the majority of that comes from domestic tourists – international tourism accounts for just 30 percent of that figure.

What makes Paris the world’s best tourist destination? Share with us your recommendations for the City of Light in the comments below (or tell us which French destination you think beats Paris).