declines The analysis presented here is based on 2020 data from the World Tourism Organization and lists the most popular 41 countries. Both the number of tourists and the revenue apply to international travel, i.e., they do not include domestic travelers. A tourist in this context is any guest who spent at least one night in the country.

Drastic declines due to Covid-19

Massive travel restrictions were imposed in nearly every country in 2020 and 2021, causing high revenue losses and significantly lower tourist numbers internationally. In the U.S. alone, the number of foreign visitors dropped by over 70% compared to 2019. A similarly drastic picture is emerging in almost all countries. In some cases, there were declines to below 5%.

At the moment, not all data is available yet. Only 129 countries have reported revenue and visitor numbers for 2020 through their national tourism authorities. This page is therefore based only on the data published to date.

The most popular travel countries

It is striking that tourism is very limited in large parts of Africa and even in South America, which is so culturally interesting. On the other hand, many European countries are visited quite often by foreigners, which is mainly due to their geographical proximity to other countries.