world tourism day chart

By Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser

Tourism has massively increased in recent decades. Aviation has opened up travel from domestic to international. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of international visits had more than doubled since 2000.

Tourism can be important for both the travelers and the people in the countries they visit.

For visitors, traveling can increase their understanding of and appreciation for people in other countries and their cultures.

And in many countries, many people rely on tourism for their income. In some, it is one of the largest industries.

But tourism also has externalities: it contributes to global carbon emissions and can encroach on local environments and cultures.

On this page, you can find data and visualizations on the history and current state of tourism across the world.

Interactive Charts on Tourism

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• Regional Support Office for Asia and the Pacific (RSOAP)
• Member States in Asia and the Pacific
• SUSTAINABLE TOURISM OBSERVATORIES (INSTO)

Travel demand continued to show remarkable resilience and sustained recovery, amid economic and geopolitical challenges. An estimated 700 million tourists travelled internationally from January to July 2023, 43% higher than in 2022 although 16% less compared to 2019.

International tourism is experiencing a rapid recovery in Asia and the Pacific where arrivals climbed to 61% of pre-pandemic levels this period after the reopening of many destinations and source markets earlier this year. The reopening of China and other Asian markets is expected to continue boosting travel in the region and to other parts of the world.

According to the UNWTO Tourism Recovery Tracker , both international air capacity and passenger demand recovered about 84% of pre-pandemic levels through June 2023. However, the extreme weather-related events that occurred over recent months as well as the critical challenges of managing increasing tourism flows underline the need to build a more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient sector.

Read more on the UNWTO Tourism Barometer (September 2023 excerpt) here .

About the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer

The UNWTO World Tourism Barometer is a publication of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) that monitors short-term tourism trends regularly to provide global tourism stakeholders with up-to-date analysis of international tourism. The information is updated several times a year and includes an analysis of the latest data on tourism destinations (inbound tourism) and source markets (outbound tourism). The Barometer also includes three times a year Confidence Index based on the UNWTO Panel of Tourism Experts survey, which provides an evaluation of recent performance and short-term prospects for international tourism.

Source: UNWTO Press Release Barometer September 19th, 2023 (Madrid)

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Regional Support Office in Asia and the Pacific (RSOAP)

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The World's Largest Tourism Spenders

World Tourism Day , celebrated annually on September 27, serves as a global recognition of the vital role that tourism plays in our world. The day was established and first observed by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in 1980 to celebrate tourism's social, cultural, political and economic value. Tourism not only has the power to foster understanding between nations and promote cultural exchange, but it is also an important driver of economic growth and development. Especially for smaller countries that aren’t rich in resources and don’t play a major role in global trade, tourism is often a key export sector, attracting foreign capital and creating wealth by fostering the domestic service sector, particularly in hospitality, transportation and entertainment.

Over the past few decades, the world has seen a steep increase in international tourism , as the world has become more globalized and advances in transportation have increased mobility and brought down travel costs. Wealth and prosperity have also contributed to an increase in international travel, particularly in countries like China, where a growing middle class has clearly shown an appetite for exploring the world in the past decade.

As our latest Racing Bars video, based on UNWTO data , shows, outbound tourism spending by Chinese travelers increased more than tenfold between 2006 and 2019, catapulting China to the top of the international tourism spending ranking, a position it even held through the pandemic, despite widespread travel restrictions. Aside from China, the United States have been at or near the top of the ranking for the past three decades, with travelers from Germany, France and the UK also spending freely abroad. The ranking nicely reflects the rise in prosperity in certain countries, with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and India all entering the top 10 at some point in the past five years.

Description

This video shows the countries with the highest outbound tourism spending since 1995.

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Statistics of tourism

The United Nations recognizes the World Tourism Organization as the appropriate organization to collect, to analyse, to publish, to standardize and to improve the statistics of tourism, and to promote the integration of these statistics within the sphere of the United Nations system.

“Official statistics provide an indispensable element in the information system of a democratic society, serving the government, the economy and the public with data about the economic, demographic, social and environmental situation.”

Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics

The UNWTO Statistics Department is committed to developing tourism measurement for furthering knowledge of the sector, monitoring progress, evaluating impact, promoting results-focused management, and highlighting strategic issues for policy objectives. 

The department works towards advancing the methodological frameworks for measuring tourism and expanding its analytical potential, designs practical guidance for their implementation in countries, supports statistical strengthening in countries through capacity building, and compiles and disseminates tourism statistics of countries all over the world.

The United Nations recognizes the World Tourism Organization as the appropriate organization to collect, to analyses, to publish, to standardize and to improve the statistics of tourism , and to promote the integration of these statistics within the sphere of the United Nations system.

Tourism Statistics Database

UNWTO systematically gathers tourism statistics from countries and territories around the world into a vast database that constitutes the most comprehensive statistical information available on the tourism sector. 

COVID-19 AND TOURISM STATISTICS

With new situations emerging from the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, some clarifications need to be made to the UN statistical standards on tourism to maintain as far as possible data consistency and international comparability

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