Xiamen second best travel destination worldwide

Xiamen in East China's Fujian province comes in second on the recent list of 10 World's Best Places to Visit for 2019. [Photo/xmnn.cn]

Xiamen in East China's Fujian province came in second on the recent list of 10 of the World's Best Places to Visit for 2019 launched by the Austrian daily Oesterreich.

Rolled out at the Austria Leisure Tourism Exhibition held in the European country's capital Vienna from Jan 10 to 13, the list focuses more on niche tourist destinations.

Xiamen is described as a city of integration of western and eastern cultures surrounded by numerous islands, second only to Kaikoura in New Zealand.

As Xiamen's international profile expands, the city has been ranked highly on many lists.

It topped the 19 Most Popular Tourist Destinations in 2019 recently released by Airbnb, a global homestay reservation company and is also included among the Top 10 Travel Destinations in China for the upcoming Spring Festival by the largest Chinese online travel agency Ctrip.

Statistics show that to date Xiamen has been home to more than 2,800 hotels with 130,000 guest rooms.

In 2018, the city welcomed 89 million tourists from home and abroad, up by 13.7 percent year-on-year. The revenue of its tourism industry soared 19.8 percent to 140 million yuan ($20.29 million). On average each tourist spent 1,573 yuan in Xiamen last year with a year-on-year increase of 5.4 percent.

Rounding out the top 10 in the Oesterreich's survey of best places to visit in 2019 worldwide are Puebla in Mexico, Normandy in France, the Great Smoky Mountains in the United States, Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, Accra in Ghana, Mozambique, the Outer Hebrides in Scotland and Wakayama Prefecture in Japan.