Countries with the Most Tourists (actual)

This quiz is different from most other lists on the subject as, usually, those lists do not count domestic tourists as tourists. This way of measuring is, of course, heavily biased toward small countries surrounded by many other countries and produces laughably inaccurate data such as, for example, the idea that Prague entertains more tourists than Orlando. That's just flat out wrong.

So... I went digging for better information that included both domestic and international tourists and counted them the same. On this quiz 1 tourist = 1 tourist regardless of nearby geography and geopolitics. However, it's hard to find data like this, thus the small size of the quiz and the fact that the data is not up-to-date.

Having been to most of those countries, I have no problem at all believing Poland gets more tourists than the Czech Republic or Croatia. Suggesting otherwise actually seems a bit silly. Germany, Spain and Italy on the other hand would be surprising, but all it would take for this to be true would be for Poles (on average) to take a vacation within their own country thrice per year, and Spaniards to do so only 1-2x. That would even up the scores given Spain's lead in receiving more international tourists. As to your implication that the data has been adjusted, well if you are speaking to my own integrity I've demonstrated time and again that this at least exceeds your own. I don't just make stuff up to put on my quizzes. If you're implying that the five researches who put together the study (one from Carnegie Mellon, one from Leuven in Belgium, and three from the University of Hamburg) had a personal agenda to put Poland ahead of Germany, I'd love to hear what it was.

I don't know. I wish that the data I'd found was a bit more comprehensive and I would have made a longer list, but it wasn't.

I find your skepticism encouraging. Your laziness a bit less so. :) You can find the answers if you follow the link I posted above to the study. I'll cut & paste a little bit here:

" Data are mostly in the form of number

of trips to destinations beyond a non-

negligible distance from the place of residence, an

d involving at least one overnight stay. For

some countries such data format was not available,

and we resorted to either the number of

registered guests in hotels, campsites, hostels etc

., or the ratio between the number of

overnight stays and the average length of stay. The

latter formats underestimate domestic

tourism by excluding trips to friend and relatives;

nevertheless we included such data for

completeness. "

Using my own calculations from the available data, I'm pretty sure that Japan is very close and winds up #11. And almost all of their tourism is domestic. I don't think this is because nobody wants to visit Japan; I think it's probably just because it's pretty well isolated. Even from most other parts of Asia, Japan isn't that easy to get to.

Russia and Thailand both get a sizeable number of tourists and I'm also a bit surprised they didn't do better in the rankings. I think there are a combination of factors. Thailand doesn't generate a lot of domestic tourists, that's one. Even though there are a lot of people living in Thailand, most of them don't have the money to go on vacation. Also, Thailand is just as isolated from the major source countries of international tourists (Europe and North America) as Japan is. As China becomes an increasingly important source country for international tourism, a trend we've seen happening in a big way the last couple years, this may change.

hm.. okay.. based on what?

yes, per year. Though individual people can be counted multiple times if they take more than one trip in the year. Americans like to travel, and other people like to travel to America. The combination of the two = lots of tourists visiting places in the USA.

I regret that I didn't have time to stop in Krakow during my own trip to Poland. I spent most of my time in Gdansk/Gdynia/Sopot/Hel, plus an afternoon in Warsaw and a couple days in Lublin. But I'll go back next year and visit Krakow then.

When you started saying rather attractive, beautiful.... I was with you but then you switched course and started talking about cities. Reminded me of Monty Python... she's got huuuuge... tracts of land. ;-)

While I'm sure they receive their fair share, I'm also sure that it's nowhere even close to 97 million, which they would need to make the top 10 on this list.

Also the criteria used by the researchers who tabulated this data includes an overnight stay. I don't think there are any hotels in the Vatican.

Find me reliable recent data and I'll happily expand or update this. It took a lot of digging to even find stats on the top 10.

Italy and Spain are very expensive.

I believe Egypt's amount of domestic tourism is negligible, so we can get a pretty complete picture if we just look at international arrivals. Between 2010 and the present each year Egypt has received between 9 and 15 million international tourists. They took a big hit following the revolution in '10 and haven't recovered since then, but I think the're still the #1 tourist destination in Africa. I don't know how much domestic figures would boost their overall total but still probably nowhere near 97 million. I could be wrong. There are a lot of people in Egypt.

For people who don't understand why this is simply wrong, there is already a quiz like that elsewhere on the site.

The UK entertains significantly more domestic tourists than France does.

The UK entertains more domestic tourists and more international tourists than Poland does. Not sure why you are confused about that one.

Indonesia, a country of 250 million people, entertains many more domestic tourists than either Spain or Italy.

Not hard to understand. Many of these small European countries show up on lists that only count international tourists because of the political nature of Europe. That being that there are very many very small countries that border many other very small countries, traveling between them is simple, within the Schengen Area it's as easy as driving between U.S. states- no border checkpoints or passport control or anything. However, when you live in such a small country surrounded by other small countries, when you go on vacation you're probably going to leave the country. Thus, their domestic tourism numbers are smaller.

Count every tourist as a tourist instead of selectively ignoring billions of them that don't cross an international boundary and a more accurate picture emerges of the number of tourists received by each of these places.

I'm guessing that data would be ever harder to come up with.

There's no rehashing here. I didn't make the data. The study was conducted by Germans and Belgians. The American ex-pat who lives all over the world, who doesn't believe in nationalism, who is openly against the idea of patriotism in part because it leads to idiotic rants like the above, and who also authored this quiz has happily and openly admitted that with up-to-date data China would be #1, not the USA. The many comments above fully address your asinine complaints.

Conclusion: you are either a hypocrite guilty of the bigotry and bias you project onto others, or a complete idiot. Probably both. The USA exists. Grow up and get over it.

and.. "complicated?" Counting 1 tourist as 1 tourist is complicated? Rather than ignoring millions based on their place of origin? Again, what I said above...

Pretty expensive compared to most of the places I vacation. But cheaper than a lot of more touristy places.

Sue Charlton did

France only has the most if you disregard domestic tourism. This quiz is outdated, but, if I could find up-to-date information it would not help France's standing at all. Almost certainly China would be #1.

No worries. You're right, most quizzes rely only on international tourist numbers, which paint an extremely misleading picture of the total amount of tourists different places receive. I wanted to do something different and more accurate.

I would be happy to update this quiz, but it's hard to find good information on tourism numbers that include both international and domestic tourists. If you come across any, please let me know. I know that these figures are very out-of-date. Any recent look into the matter would no doubt have China in the #1 position.

Nope