Countries with the Most Tourists Per Capita

Interesting - I have visited there, and outside the cities its a beautiful landscape. Also pleasantly free of billboards!

A great spot to establish a textile business or exploit the emerging tech market but hardly a choice destination for beauty. Sure, the beauty is there, but I'd pass on the Bang for a more civil country with equivalent draw.

Vermont and Bangladesh: I can barely tell which is which.

I've been to one of this, but I don't remember which?

@englishsystem, there are plenty of problems with Bangladesh, but "not civil"? That has colonialist undertones. I doubt you meant it that way, but it's still not a fair characterization. Bangladesh has a pretty low violent crime rate and is relatively stable. The worst thing tourists have to look out for is pick-pocketing or people trying to rip you off. Corruption is also a problem, but probably not something you'd run into as much at major tourist attractions. I'll grant that it's more dangerous for women, but even then I think it's okay as long as they are traveling with a male.

I definitely agree with Jerry and Yossarian that there are some very beautiful parts worth seeing outside the cities, and while Bangladesh doesn't have a very large tourism industry, it's something that being developed. Cox's Bazaar, for example, is becoming popular among Westerners. I think tourism will become safer and more feasible in the next few decades, as the country develops.

That's funny...while I was taking the quiz I was wondering what the lowest ratio was and I thought Bangladesh because it's so densely populated and nobody goes there.

I think I pointed out on another quiz you can work it out for north korea. They have organized trips of around 6000 westerners a year. Not sure about Asian countries' visitors. Population is (said to be) 25 million so also lowest on the list with Bangladesh at <1/1000.

If Hawaii was a country unto itself, I wonder where it would be on this list.

Hawaii is bae.. such volcano, such lava, such earthquake, such geography

Nevada would be higher

I have officially been to one of these countries: Estonia.

haha

fitheach +1

Maybe this was his only bussiness trip, the rest were personal holidays

Holy cow! We Estonians get nearly 3 million tourists every year. Apparently the old town of Tallinn is famous. Also, some Estonians know how to sell Soviet-related stuff to tourists (because that's what tourists look for here). Then again, Russians often come here for vacations.

day trippers are likely not included in the statistics

Vatican most likely wasn't included when I posted that comment. I'm not sure now if the sourceis the same for all countries, if Vatican is here, surely e.g. Singapore should be also.

Maybe they went to a part of the USSR?

I first thought the Vatican had a decimal too many if it was supposed to be on top, until I realized it was a comma...

I did better trying to guess countries with low population than those with high tourist numbers.

Not to throw cold water on the quiz, but what constitutes a "visit" to these little postage stamp countries is far different than a visit to a larger one. The typical visit to these places may not even include a single overnight stay and bring very little money into the economy compared to tourists in larger countries that are going to stay awhile. You're never going to convince me that San Marino is twice as "touristy" as Italy or France.

7/28

When it comes to "per capita" stuffs, it seems that micro-nations usually win.

really? I wonder if that has something to do with the amount of inhabitants they have..

very surprised Australia isn't on here

I was thinking the same thing.

Australia gets 7-8 million tourists each year, but the population is too big for the ratio to be even close in this quiz.

We also have onerous visa requirements, until recently a very strong dollar (and it's still expensive even with the lower exchange rate) and the travelling distances between attractions within Australia are still vast.

I like how you have used the word still, like they are planning to shrink Australia in the near future ;)

Other name for this quiz: countries with very small populations that aren't repulsive or dangerous. That would get you most of the answers.

Doesn't slip off the tongue as well as 'Most touristy countries' though does it . :)

I think Monako should be added.

If you include Countries 197 to 205 , then Sint Maarten (13.40), Aruba (10.00), Cook Islands (8.06) and Niue (5.44) make the list.

You would think Saudi Arabia with the hajj

Hajjis aren't really tourists, Saudi Arabia gets almost 0 tourism apart from religious pilgrims, and altogether even including Saudis themselves there are maybe 6-8 million pilgrims who make hajj each year, less than a quarter of the total population of the country so the ratio would be much smaller than those listed.

I heard that they were going to. Not sure if they have yet or not. But if they do, those will be different from Hajj or Umrah visas.

Then the Vatican should not count as most visitors are 'religious pilgrims' .

I disagree

What a silly thing to say

not even close to being true. And the religious pilgrims that go to Mecca are not "religious pilgrims," they are, in fact, believers performing a specific religious duty. They are not tourists in any sense of the word. Unless Catholics taking communion or going to confession are tourists.

Though once in a while there will be an atheist working on contract basis in the country who converted to Islam for the lolz and used his Muslim laminate to get in to Mecca without any intention of performing hajj, but that happens very rarely, and wouldn't be counted in these stats anyway since he had his iqama and was officially a resident of the country at the time.

Taking communion is a specifically prescribed religious duty of Catholicism. Going on vacation somewhere and taking communion in a far away church is not. Performing hajj is a specifically prescribed, highly ritualized religious duty. Hajjis in Mecca are not there sightseeing. The Saudis have bulldozed most of the historically significant sites around the city to make way for more hotels and such. The only significant thing to them is the kabaa. It's very, very different.

Where do the Vatican stats come from? Vatican City does not appear in the country stats in the UN World Tourism Organisation link you give. The stats there are for overnight visits, and since Vatican Citiy has no hotels at all, the number of overnight visit tourists would be very few indeed. Even if you count day visitors, there would be no way of counting numbers, because the border is unmarked and unpatrolled and people just wander in and out of the bits they can access, namely Piazza San Pietro (St Peter's Square), the Sistine Chapel, and some museums.

I'm surprised that Montenegro is the least guessed country. It's very touristic, with great seaside and cities like Kotor.