According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, it has been revealed that Dubai has ranked fourth in the world on the list of the most visited cities during 2017.

Named “City Travel and Tourism Impact 2018”, the report states that 15.8 million people visited the city last year, beating London, Singapore and New York – which placed fifth, sixth and seventh, respectively.

Dubai ranked ahead of London by more than one million visits, with the capital city getting 14.6 million. As for other international cities, Dubai also overtook Tokyo, which ranked ninth with 10.8 million visitors, Paris, which ranked tenth with 10.3 million visitors and Barcelona, which ranked 15th with 8.9 million.

Hong Kong nabbed the top spot with 27.9 million visitors, while Thailand’s capital city Bangkok came second with 22.7 million, and Macau placed third with 17.3 million.

What kind of number can we expect in 2018? Well Dubai International Airport (DXB) recently smashed its own record of largest-ever number of passengers in a month, reaching a whopping 8.37 million in August.

With this number of people coming through DXB, we could see that number increase in next year’s report.

But that’s next year. We first have to ring in 2019 before we get there, and Dubai is bringing back the Burj Khalifa’s spectacular fireworks show to kick off the New Year. It’s even released a sneak peek of what it might look like.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Time Out Dubai on Tuesday November 27th, 2018 http://bit.ly/TODubaiRanked4th