Why Cape Town still trails these most visited cities for 2025

Cape Town remains one of the world's most recognisable leisure destinations - you only have to take a look at this Daily Advent Calendar highlighting the very best of the city this festive season to understand what I'm talking about.  

Yet, global travel data for 2025 shows it still has a long climb ahead before it can compete with the planet's most visited cities.

According to Euromonitor International, international travel this year has been dominated by global aviation hubs and mega-destinations.

• Bangkok, Thailand – 30.3 million
• Hong Kong – 23.2 million
• London, United Kingdom – 22.7 million
• Macao, China – 20.4 million
• Istanbul, Turkey – 19.7 million
• Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 19.5 million
• Mecca, Saudi Arabia – 18.7 million
• Antalya, Turkey – 18.6 million
• Paris, France – 18.3 million
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – 17.3 million

Bangkok leads the ranking, with cities outside the traditional Western tourism core, such as Istanbul, Dubai and Saudi drawing more international visitors in a single year than South Africa does across its entire overseas market. Cape Town does not feature anywhere near this list, underscoring the gap between its global reputation and its actual visitor volumes.

SEE: The 6 best international travel options for Capetonians in 2026

Growth masks structural challenges

New analysis from SATSA, local inbound tourism body, shows why this gap persists. While South Africa has recorded triple-digit growth rates off a weak post-pandemic base, overseas arrivals are still 9% below 2019 levels.  

Headline growth figures have been primarily driven by regional and African land markets, not by long-haul travellers who dominate arrivals into the world's most visited cities. 

"Total arrivals being up slightly over 2019 doesn't mean the international market has fully recovered," says SATSA CEO David Frost. "When you look specifically at overseas visitors, especially from Europe and Asia, recovery remains uneven and incomplete." 

This matters for Cape Town, which relies heavily on long-haul, high-value travellers - particularly from Europe, North America and Asia - the same markets that remain under pressure.

The United States has reached 105.7% of 2019 arrivals, and Australia stands at 109.4%. In contrast, several traditionally strong European markets remain well below pre-pandemic levels. Germany posted 126.9% quarter-on-quarter growth compared with 2024, but year-to-date sits at only 85.1% of its 2019 volumes. France shows a similar pattern.

Despite 113.2% growth in Q3 year-on-year, it remains at just 80.4% of 2019 arrivals year-to-date. For context, Germany and France are our third- and fourth-largest markets respectively.

Air access differentiator

A key reason cities like Bangkok, Dubai and London dominate global rankings is air connectivity. They function as major international hubs with dense, year-round flight networks. By contrast, Cape Town remains limited by seasonality, constrained long-haul capacity and fewer direct routes. 

SATSA's data shows that long-haul capacity from Europe into South Africa is still below 2019 levels. Where recovery has occurred -such as in Brazil - it has been closely tied to the restoration or expansion of direct flights. The upcoming São Paulo–Cape Town route, launching in 2026, is a step forward, but it illustrates how much momentum has already been lost.

Without sustained expansion of direct, long-haul routes into Cape Town, matching the arrival volumes of global top-ten cities remains unrealistic. 

“It is not simply about adding more seats,” adds Frost. “It is about where those seats are placed, which markets they serve, and whether they support growth in high-yield and underperforming regions." 

READ: Cape Town lands major new direct route for 2026

Popular, but not yet competitive at scale

Cape Town's challenge is not its appeal, it consistently ranks among the world's most beautiful cities - but rather its scale, access, and consistency. The world's most visited cities combine leisure and business tourism, serve as transit hubs and benefit from strategic alignment in aviation, visa access and marketing.

As Frost notes, "The real test is whether we can translate short-term recovery into long-term competitiveness. That requires moving beyond month-to-month celebrations and asking harder questions about market mix, air capacity, visa performance and geographic spread. The challenge now is to use this intelligence to futureproof growth so that South Africa does not simply return to its 2019 baseline, but outperforms it in a way that benefits the entire country.” 

READ: 

Cape Town's New International Airport: Here’s what travellers need to know

Until this happens across the board in South Africa, Cape Town and other key tourist destinations in the country are likely to remain globally admired but statistically distant from the world's most visited cities.