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International tourist expenditure abroad

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Tourism

What you should know about this indicator

  • Expenditures associated with international visitors are traditionally categorized under the travel item of the Balance of Payments (BOP). For inbound tourism, these expenses are recorded as "credits" in the BOP and referred to as "travel receipts".
  • It's important to note that BOP estimates also include expenditures related to other types of travelers, such as long-term students, patients, border workers, and seasonal workers, which can be substantial in some countries.
  • When reporting a time series of expenditure, comparing observations across time without adjusting for inflation may not yield meaningful results. This is because prices change over time due to factors such as inflation.
  • In order to enable comparisons across different time periods, it is necessary to consider the impact of price changes.
  • In the context of this indicator, where there is no breakdown of the destinations where tourists spend their money on travel activities, the data has been adjusted for inflation using the US Consumer Price Index (CPI).
International tourist expenditure abroad
This data is expressed in constant US dollars. It is adjusted for inflation but does not account for differences in the cost of living between countries.
Source
UNWTO (2024); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 17, 2024
Next expected update
August 2025
Date range
1995–2022
Unit
constant 2021 US$

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) collects data from countries through annual questionnaires that follow the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (IRTS 2008) standard, a framework approved by the United Nations. The data covers various aspects of tourism, such as inbound tourism (including arrivals by region, main purpose, and mode of transport, as well as accommodation and tourism expenditure in the country), domestic Tourism (including trips and accommodation), outbound tourism (including departures and tourism expenditure in other countries), tourism industries (such as accommodation in hotels and similar establishments), and employment (including the number of employees in tourism industries).

Retrieved on
August 17, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.unwto.org/tourism-statistics/key-tourism-statistics
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Tourism Organization (2024), 145 Key Tourism Statistics, UNWTO, Madrid:
https://www.unwto.org/tourism-statistics/key-tourism-statistics [17-08-2024].

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) of individual goods and services for urban consumers at the national, city, and state levels. CPI is presented on an annual basis, which we have derived as the average of the monthly CPIs in a given year.

Retrieved on
May 16, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.bls.gov/data/tools.htm
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: International tourist expenditure abroad”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska (2023) - “Tourism”. Data adapted from UNWTO, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-expenditures-of-tourists-abroad [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNWTO (2024); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNWTO (2024); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “International tourist expenditure abroad” [dataset]. UNWTO, “145 key tourism statistics”; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “US consumer prices” [original data]. Retrieved November 19, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-expenditures-of-tourists-abroad