Sovereign and dependent territory rows of the World Bank “International tourism, number of arrivals” indicator (top 30 by most recent year). Values in millions of arrivals (two decimals). 2020 onward reflects COVID-era disruption. Aggregates (region.id === “NA”) excluded.
Chart ready. Press play to start.
How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “International Tourism Arrivals by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (World Bank indicator code ST.INT.ARVL). Values are expressed in million arrivals.
What to watch. The 2020 cliff is unlike anything else on this site: every bar collapses by 60–90% at once. Then watch the recovery diverge — Europe fast, China slow — while France’s decades-long grip on first place never loosens.
Caveats. Arrival counts generally cover overnight visitors, but treatment of day-trippers and transit passengers differs by country. Land borders inflate European totals in ways island nations can never match, so cross-regional comparisons need care.
Trends in the data
Before being impressed by the size of these numbers, question how they are counted. The United States recorded 71.48 million in 2005 and 183.18 million the following year. No tourism market grows 2.6× in twelve months; the counting method must have changed. This series mixes countries that count only overnight visitors with countries that include same-day border crossings and travellers in transit. The rows sit in one table, but the measuring stick differs by country.
France is explained by the same thing. In this series France reaches 148.26 million in 1996 and 217.88 million in 2019 — more than double the “80–90 million a year” usually quoted. For a country at the centre of the European mainland, where crossing a land border is an everyday act, whether transit and day trips are included can change the figure by a factor of two. The difficulty of comparing an island with a country surrounded by land neighbours shows up plainly here.
The number of reporting countries also varies. There are 24 from 1995 to 2002, 28 in 2005, a full 30 from 2015 to 2018, and only 17 in 2020. The population being ranked is not the same at the two ends of the chart, so “rank out of 30” is strictly true only for the four years 2015–2018. That Mexico (85.45 million) leads 1995 with Poland (82.24 million) second should be read with this mixture of coverage and definitions in mind. Note also that the ranking keeps the top 30 by latest value, so Japan is not among the countries shown.
With that said, the 2020 collapse is overwhelming. The United States fell from 165.48 million in 2019 to 45.04 million, a 73% drop; China from 162.54 to 30.40 million, down 81%; Spain from 126.17 to 36.41 million, down 71%. Even France roughly halved, from 217.88 to 117.11 million. Few other indicators show this many countries moving so far in the same direction in a single year. This series ends in 2020, however, so the recovery that followed is not part of the chart.
Trivia quiz
Which UN agency handles international tourism statistics and policy?
UN Tourism (formerly UNWTO), headquartered in Madrid, Spain. (Source)
What is the common term for foreign travel into a country (e.g. visitors to Japan)?
Inbound tourism. Tourism earnings are sometimes called "invisible exports" since no goods leave the country. (Source)
What caused the record collapse in international tourist arrivals in 2020?
The COVID-19 pandemic; travel restrictions cut arrivals by roughly 70% year on year. (Source)
Source
World Bank — International tourism, number of arrivals (ST.INT.ARVL)