DUBAI: Dubai has retained its top tourist destination position in the Middle East, a new tourism report revealed this week. Overall, the city is ranked in the top 10 tourism destinations globally in the recent report published by credit card company MasterCard. The MasterCard index report analyses visitor traffic and cross-border travel spend in 132 major cities worldwide. Not only did Dubai improve its position within the top 10, but managed to surpass leading international cities such as New York, Amsterdam, Taipei and Rome. Improving its position from ninth to eighth in terms of the number of inbound international visitors, Dubai features notably on the MasterCard's Worldwide Index of Global Destination Cities, where it is predicted that visitor spending in the city will increase by 18.9 percent, or $1.4 billion in 2012 compared to the recorded $7.4 billion in 2011.