Record number of tourists traveled abroad in 2015

According to the report, called World Tourism Barometer, made by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) reported that the number of international tourist arrivals reached 1.184 billion in 2015, which means a 4.4% increase, turizmusonline.hu wrote.

There were 50 million more tourists who traveled abroad than in 2014, thus, 2015 is the 6^th year in a row when the number of tourist arrivals increased above average.

According to UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai, the great performance of the touristic sector contributes to economic growth and the creation of new jobs.

The demand was strong altogether, but the situation is different in the case of various destinations mostly because of the strong exchange rate fluctuations, the lower oil prices or the security concerns, as turizmusonline.hu reported.

The growth of developed countries (5%) exceeded the developing ones (4%). 5% more tourists arrived to Europe, America, Asia and the Pacific, 3% more to the Middle East. However, the number of tourists declined by 3% in Africa, mostly because of Northern Africa’s weakness, since the third of the tourists normally targets that region.

UNWTO predicts a 4%-increase of the international tourist arrivals in 2016. 4-5%-increase is expected in Asia, the Pacific and in America, but this number will be between 3.5 and 4.5% in Europe. There is a greater uncertainty about Africa and the Middle East, so the prediction for those regions is between -2% and 5%.

According to turizmusonline.hu, Europe is leading the growth “competition”, partly because of the weaker euro. 609 million tourists visited the continent in 2015, which is 29 million more than one year earlier. There was a 6%-increase in Central and Eastern Europe, 6% in Northern Europe, 5% in Southern Europe and 4% in Western Europe.

277 million tourists visited Asia and the Pacific, 191 million visited America and 54 million people spent their holiday in the Middle East, turizmusonline.hu reports. Africa hosted only 53 million people which makes it a 3%-decrease.

The most tourists come from China; their numbers have been showing a double-digit growth since 2004. The most popular countries for them are Japan, Thailand, the USA and some European destinations.

However, the weak economies of Brazil and Russia led to the significant decrease in the number of their tourists.

Copy editor: bm

Source: http://www.turizmusonline.hu