International tourism: the most popular countries

In 2024, 1.45 billion tourists worldwide traveled to other countries. An increase of 10.7% compared to the previous year and still 1.3% less than before the Covid19 crisis. There were already 1.52 billion tourists in 2025.

The U.S. also enjoyed a handsome 72.39 million foreign visitors in 2024, resulting in third place in the global rankings.

The top place was taken by France with 102.00 million tourists.

The analysis presented here for 2024 lists the 50 most popular travel destinations. Both the number of tourists and the revenue apply to international travel, i.e. they do not include domestic travelers. Every guest who spent at least one night in the country is considered a tourist.

The most popular travel countries

It is striking that tourism is very limited in large parts of Africa and even in culturally interesting South America. In contrast, many European countries are visited quite often by foreigners, which is mainly due to their geographical proximity to other countries. The lower the travel costs, the more attractive the destinations become, especially for neighboring nations.

The following table shows the number of tourists in 2024 and 2023, as well as a comparison with the last year before the pandemic in 2019. In most countries, visitor numbers are rising rapidly again. In addition, there are also day visitors who do not stay overnight in the respective country. This proportion is naturally rather low in large countries such as the USA and Australia and island states such as Taiwan and the Philippines.

Conversely, Macau (22nd place) is an extreme example of the opposite. Although the gambling city on the south-west coast of China is full of large hotels, the number of day visitors exceeds the number of longer-staying tourists many times over.

Read also the list of the safest travel countries in the world

Rank	Country/Region	Tourists 2024 (in mln)	Change previous year	Tourists 2023 (in mln)	Pre-Covid19 Tourists 2019 (in mln)
1	France	102.00	🠭 2.0%	100.00	90.91
2	Spain	93.76	🠭 10.1%	85.17	83.51
3	United States	72.39	🠭 9.1%	66.35	79.44
4	Italy	57.73	🠭 0.8%	57.25	64.51
5	Turkey	56.70	🠭 2.7%	55.20	51.19
6	Mexico	45.04	🠭 7.4%	41.95	45.02
7	United Kingdom	38.23	🠭 2.7%	37.21	39.42
8	Germany	37.42	🠭 7.8%	34.71	39.56
9	Japan	36.87	🠭 47.1%	25.07	31.88
10	Austria	32.20	🠭 4.2%	30.90	31.88
11	Saudi Arabia	29.73	🠭 8.4%	27.42	17.53
12	Portugal	28.97	🠭 9.3%	26.50	17.28
13	Malaysia	27.30	🠭 35.6%	20.14	26.10
14	Thailand	26.94	🠭 95.5%	13.78	39.92
15	China	26.94	🠭 95.5%	13.78	65.73
16	Hong Kong	21.94	🠭 27.9%	17.16	23.75
17	Netherlands	21.20	🠭 4.4%	20.30	20.13
18	Canada	19.91	🠭 8.6%	18.34	22.15
19	Poland	19.72	🠭 3.9%	18.99	21.16
20	Vietnam	17.60	🠭 39.7%	12.60	18.01
21	South Korea	16.37	🠭 48.4%	11.03	17.50
22	Macao	16.04	🠭 12.8%	14.23	18.63
23	Morocco	16.00	🠭 10.2%	14.52	12.93
24	Egypt	15.30	🠭 2.6%	14.91	12.88
25	Indonesia	13.60	🠭 19.5%	11.38	15.46
26	Romania	13.35	🠯 -9.6%	14.78	12.82
27	Bulgaria	13.25	🠭 4.9%	12.63	7.78
28	Hungary	13.16	🠭 1.7%	12.93	16.94
29	Singapore	13.03	🠭 20.5%	10.81	15.12
30	Albania	11.48	🠭 17.9%	9.74	6.13
31	Czechia	10.60	🠭 11.9%	9.47	14.65
32	Kazakhstan	10.38	🠭 5.2%	9.87	8.52
33	Tunisia	10.00	🠭 6.7%	9.37	9.43
34	India	9.82	🠭 4.5%	9.41	17.75
35	Belgium	9.64	🠭 3.9%	9.28	9.34
36	Ireland	9.45	🠭 3.8%	9.10	10.95
37	South Africa	8.92	🠭 5.1%	8.48	10.23
38	Dominican Republic	8.54	🠭 5.9%	8.06	6.45
39	Uzbekistan	7.96	🠭 20.1%	6.63	6.75
40	Taiwan	7.86	🠭 21.1%	6.49	0.00
41	Sweden	7.80	🠭 4.7%	7.45	7.62
42	Brazil	6.77	🠭 14.6%	5.91	6.35
43	Cambodia	6.70	🠭 22.9%	5.45	6.61
44	Bahrain	6.62	🠭 20.7%	5.48	3.85
45	Argentina	6.60	🠯 -9.4%	7.29	7.40
46	Norway	6.10	🠭 4.3%	5.85	5.88
47	Philippines	5.95	🠭 9.1%	5.45	8.26
48	Puerto Rico	5.55	🠭 10.0%	5.05	3.18
49	Australia	5.32	🠯 -26.0%	7.19	9.47
50	Chile	5.24	🠭 40.4%	3.73	4.52

Tourism recovers from the pandemic

Up until 2019, international tourism developed almost steadily upwards. From 2010 to 2025 alone, visitor numbers rose by around 51 percent. Even before that, there were only significant slumps in the years after September 11, 2001 and during the economic crisis in 2008. The most massive and unprecedented global slump to date began in spring 2020, when the first travel restrictions and bans were imposed due to the Covid pandemic. The graph shows the global development of visitor numbers in millions of tourists.

Germany is the world travel champion

With an incredible 114.40 million trips abroad in 2024, Germany was in first place. In addition, there were 50.13 million short trips without overnight stays. Each vacationer spent an average of 732 $. This does not even include transportation costs for flight tickets, for example.

the United Kingdom followed in second place with an equally impressive 90.61 million stays abroad (plus 824,205 day trips) and expenses in the amount of 119.38 billion $. Not quite as surprising, but still traditionally remarkable, France follows in third place with 36.52 million multi-day vacations and 13.86 million same-day trips.

Considering that China and the U.S. have a significantly larger population, some European countries are also very well in the running. Incidentally, similar to Europeans, most Americans stay on their own continent during their vacation. The top destinations are within the vast and both scenically and climatically varied USA. Only then come destinations in Mexico and Canada.

Internationally, the proportion of Asian guests has been increasing noticeably for several years. Chinese, South Koreans and Taiwanese in particular can be seen in more and more countries, with traditionally significantly more countries being visited during a vacation than is usual in most other countries. As vacations are rarely longer, the time spent at individual vacation destinations is shortened. At the same time, frequent changes of location also increase the average cost per person.

A look at the costs

Naturally, the income and expenditure per tourist can only reflect what is statistically measurable. If a vacationer travels across several countries in a motorhome and always pays in cash, these expenses are hardly measurable. Such a traveler is not registered anywhere and the expenditure can only be attributed to a country of origin if credit card payments or cash withdrawals allow it.

Data sources and missing countries

Since the coronavirus pandemic, not only has tourism itself changed, but also the data situation. While it used to be common for the annual statistics of the vast majority of countries to be published in the middle of the following year, this now takes several years. Unfortunately, there is no improvement in sight. Unless expressly indicated otherwise, this evaluation refers exclusively to the year 2024, as there is not yet a sufficient amount of data available for later years.

As far as possible, we try to use the data from the World Tourism Organization of the United Nations, because this is where data from all over the world usually flows together and is brought to a comparable denominator across countries in complex calculations. However, this data is not yet available for the more recent years in particular, which means that numerous figures for the year 2024 have been researched manually.