Breaking Travel News investigates: International tourism expenditure
International mass tourism is a relatively new phenomenon, growing form a low-base in the 1960s into the global juggernaut it is today.
But which countries enjoy the most tourism and which countries spend the most on travel?
Take a look at two new maps from How Much to find out where money from inbound and outbound tourism flows.
Inbound tourism can be thought of as a tourism receipts
On the map, inbound tourism expenditures are the expenditures of foreigners visiting a specific country.
From the perspective of an American, any foreigner spending money to travel to and visit your country is considered an inbound tourism expenditure.
Both maps are separated by region with a colour key indicating each region.
The bigger the country appears on the map, the more the expenditures.
The data was collected from the World Bank in 2014.
Conversely, outbound tourism expenditures are the expenditures of tourists from a specific country.
Imagine you’re an American.
If you spend money to visit Germany as an American tourist, this would be considered an outbound tourism expenditure for America.
Unsurprisingly, wealthier countries enjoy higher expenditures, both outbound and inbound.
This is simply because the citizens of these countries have more money to spend on travel. It’s also because wealthier countries usually invest in tourist attractions.
For inbound tourism expenditures, the United States is far ahead of all others.
People across the world spent a total of $220.1B to travel to the US and enjoy what the United States has to offer.
Find out more here.