Spain 'most competitive country on earth' for tourism
Tuesday, October 1, 2019 @ 9:59 AM
SPAIN is the world's second from top in foreign visitor numbers, the second in terms of tourism income volume and the most competitive holiday destination on the planet, according to the United Nations' World Tourism Organisation.
For numbers, Spain continues a trend it set around five years ago in coming second to France but above the USA, with an average of 82.7 million visitors from abroad annually – nearly double its resident population.
France is ahead with 89.4 million and the USA, despite its much larger land mass, is slightly behind on 79.6 million.
China, Italy, Turkey, México, Germany, Thailand and the UK make up the rest of the top 10.
With 1.4 billion people on earth having gone abroad for a break in the last full year – from 2017 to 2018 – a clear upward trend has been reported, with 5% more people taking holidays out of their resident country than in the 2016-2017 period.
And Spain's holidaymaker numbers have rocketed: at the start of the financial crisis, in 2009, and at a time when the country was a far-from-competitive destination compared with much cheaper tourism hotspots relatively close by, annual foreign visitors did not greatly exceed the population, coming in at 52 million, compared with the USA's 54.9 million.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com