Putting tourist info from places like the WorldBank and country data into spreadsheets, we’re visually displaying four ways of measuring how touristy a country is:

• # of Tourists (per year)
• Ratio of Tourists to Residents
• Ratio of Tourists to Land
• (Growth Rate) Change in # of Tourists in 6 Years

Combining this is the best way to empirically measure the most and least touristy countries.

First I’ll show the Infographic, which is mostly world maps of each category displaying how touristy each country is.

Then I’ll give a post below, with top 10-20 lists for each data set.

Infographic / Maps

Most and Least Number of Tourists Per Year

Obviously, this is the most common way of measuring number of tourists… by the number of tourists.

France has the most with 82 million international tourists per year, and Tuvalu (and North Korea) the least number of tourists per year, with only 3,000.

 

Most Number of Tourists Per Year:

France	82,570,000
United States	75,608,000
Spain	75,315,000
China	59,270,000
Italy	52,372,000
United Kingdom	35,814,000
Germany	35,555,000
Mexico	35,079,000
Thailand	32,530,000
Turkey	30,289,000

 

Least Number of Tourists Per Year:

Tuvalu	3,000
North Korea	3,000
Kiribati	6,000
Turkmenistan	8,000
Marshall Islands	10,000
Guinea	12,000
American Samoa	20,000
Afghanistan	20,000
Gabon	20,000
Guinea-Bissau	22,000

 

Highest and Lowest Ratio of Tourists to Residents

If you were to randomly meet a thousand people in the country, how likely would it be that they are a tourist or a local?

In Andorra, there are 36 times more tourists than residents (in a year)!

On the other hand, there are 8,496 more residents than tourists in North Korea (in a year). Although, I’d prefer being neither a tourists nor a resident in North Korea, the data still says it’s the least touristy country by this metric.

 

In fact, this is one of my favorite ways of measuring how touristy a country is. Of all the millions of people that visit India in a year, there are 91 times more residents currently there, than there are tourists visiting in an entire year.

One exception: because I don’t have tourist data on the Vatican, it’s not included. But I’m pretty sure that it would be top of the list with some insane ratio (probably for tourist per square mile as well), but it’s not included.

(Note that I flip the ratios on these two charts).

 

Mosts Tourists Per Resident:

Andorra	36
Macao SAR, China	25
Bulgaria	19
Turks and Caicos Islands	12
Aruba	10
Northern Mariana Islands	9
Guam	9
Monaco	8
Brunei Darussalam	7
Bahrain	6

 

(Least touristy ratio) Most Residents Per Tourists:

North Korea	8496
Afghanistan	1700
Guinea	1059
Congo, Dem. Rep.	1004
Turkmenistan	719
Bangladesh	543
Pakistan	217
Chad	209
Libya	187
Mauritania	147

Since many of these countries have no tourists due to civil war, I’ll include some honorable mentions:

• Ethiopia – 120
• Burundi – 102
• India – 91
• Madagascar – 87
• Papua New Guinea – 58
• Tanzania – 46
• Kenya – 39
• Nepal – 38
• Moldova – 32
• Brazil – 31

 

Most and Least Tourists per Square Mile in the Country

Simply put, if you walked across an entire country, how often would you spot another tourist?

 

Since Macau gets nearly 16 million tourists a year, yet only has 12 square miles of land… That’s nearly 1.3 million tourists (per year) per square foot.

Even if (hypothetically), each tourist only stayed 1 night (so 43,000 tourists a night), you can assume that there are 3,585 other tourists in the same square mile as you… And double if you assume each tourist stays two nights (triple for an average of three nights, and so on…).

 

On the other hand, if you walked across Turkmenistan, you’d need to cover 23 square miles to find another tourist! And that’s assuming they stay all year!

If you assumed each tourist stayed an entire week (153 tourists a week), you’d need to walk 1,225 square miles to find another tourist!

Truthfully, all 153 are likely near Ashgabat International Airport… Which means you could have the other 188,500 mi² to yourself.

Either way, here are the worst and best places to get some square miles to yourself:

 

Tourists (per year) per Square Mile:

Macao SAR, China	1,297,851
Monaco	430,769
Singapore	46,453
Bahrain	34,434
Hong Kong SAR, China	24,956
Malta	16,115
Aruba	15,971
Andorra	15,641
Bermuda	11,619
Maldives	10,717

 

Square Miles per Tourist (per year)

Turkmenistan	23.56
Libya	19.98
North Korea	15.51
Greenland	14.93
Mauritania	13.27
Afghanistan	12.59
Congo, Dem. Rep.	11.18
Guinea	7.91
Chad	6.99
Gabon	5.17

And because no one is walking across North Korea, Congo, or even Greenland… Here are a few more honorable mentions:

• Mali – 2.77
• Mongolia – 1.49
• Papua New Guinea – 1.28
• Angola 1.21
• Madagascar 0.77
• Brazil 0.50
• Ethiopia 0.49
• Solomon Islands 0.49
• Bolivia 0.44
• Australia 0.36

 

Fastest Growing (and Declining) Tourism (change from 2010 to 2016)

This is the most interesting data to me, because it possibly reflects where I should be going. These are places with drastic changes, which means things could be very different years from now – cultures change, prices change, and sometimes becomes less personal.

Recently places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka have opened up for tourism, and there are still very few tourists going there. But they are starting to!

 

Also, I found this list so interesting, I decided to include the top 20 for fastest growing number of tourists, below.

 

Fastest Growing Tourism:

Cote d’Ivoire	528.17%
Bhutan	412.20%
Myanmar	267.05%
Iceland	266.46%
Sao Tome and Principe	262.50%
Kyrgyz Republic	242.69%
Sri Lanka	213.61%
Georgia	213.04%
Paraguay	181.29%
Lesotho	180.75%
Japan	179.18%
India	152.23%
Colombia	136.09%
Congo, Rep.	121.78%
Bosnia and Herzegovina	112.88%
Niger	105.41%
Thailand	104.13%
Chile	101.39%
Marshall Islands	100.00%
Cambodia	99.84%

(Basically all of South East Asia is on the list).

 

Most Declined Tourism:

Egypt, Arab Rep.	-62.58%
San Marino	-50.00%
Burkina Faso	-44.53%
Ukraine	-37.12%
Micronesia, Fed. Sts.	-33.33%
Tunisia	-26.88%
Palestine	-23.37%
Lebanon	-22.14%
Bahrain	-15.01%
Kenya	-13.74%

 

Conclusion (The Most Common Most and Least Touristy Countries)

(Yes, I typed the title correctly).

 

Everything thus far has been not only objective, but as accurate as the WorldBank.

Now… I’m going to do something completely arbitrary. Give each country a rank in the three categories above – # of Tourists; Tourists per mi2; and Tourists per resident (everything except growth). Then add up the ranks to come up with the countries that are most commonly at the top (or bottom of the lists).

Again, one exception is that the Vatican was not included, and probably would top both tourists per resident, and per square mile.

 

The Least Overall Touristy Countries:

1. North Korea
2. Turkmenistan
3. Afghanistan
4. Guinea
5. Libya
6. Mauritania
7. Gabon
8. Congo, Dem. Rep.
9. Chad
10. Central African Republic
11. Guinea-Bissau
12. Sierra Leone
13. Niger
14. Mali
15. Papua New Guinea
16. Solomon Islands
17. Burkina Faso
18. Madagascar
19. Tajikistan
20. Angola

Honorable mentions: Ethiopia, Moldova, Kiribati, Kosovo, Mongolia, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, and Nepal.

 

The Most Overall Touristy Countries:

1. Macao SAR, China
2. Hong Kong SAR, China
3. Bahrain
4. Singapore
5. Austria
6. Croatia
7. Andorra
8. Greece
9. Spain
10. United Arab Emirates
11. Denmark
12. France
13. Netherlands
14. Italy
15. Malta
16. Bulgaria
17. Guam
18. Ireland
19. Cyprus
20. Aruba

Note that the WorldBank didn’t give info for some places like the Vatican.

Also, this method is biased against anywhere in Europe and any city-state, because it has a high density, in terms of area. So I was surprised to see Bulgaria on the list.

Especially city-states. Hong Kong isn’t being compared to Paris, it’s being compared to the entire country of France, including the countryside.

None the less, if you think about the sheer number of tourists and how many there are per square mile, and per resident… It could roughly explain how much a culture is effected by tourism.

 

Sources for tourism info:

Majority came from data.worldbank.org.

Afghanistan, Gabon, Greenland, Kosovo, Libya, Mauritania, Turkmenistan, UAE.

WorldBank didn’t have 2016 info on 25 smaller countries, where I had to use 2010 info (therefore they didn’t show up on the changed list).

I could not find info for the following countries: Equatorial Guinea, Faroe Islands, Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan, Cook Islands, Taiwan, and the Vatican City. (If you find a reliable source for yearly # of tourists for Faroe Islands, please let me know).