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International tourist trips

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Tourism

What you should know about this indicator

  • When an individual visits a country multiple times within a year, each visit is counted as a separate arrival.
  • Similarly, if a person travels to multiple countries during a single trip, their arrival in each country is recorded individually.
  • As a result, the number of arrivals does not necessarily reflect the number of individuals traveling, as one person can generate multiple arrivals.
  • Note that before 2006, the US counted same-day trips from Canada only. After 2006, day trips from Mexico were also included.
International tourist trips
Trips by people who arrive from abroad and stay overnight.
Source
UNWTO (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 17, 2024
Next expected update
August 2025
Date range
1995–2022
Unit
arrivals

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].

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.

Read about our data pipeline

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 trips”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska (2023) - “Tourism”. Data adapted from UNWTO. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/international-tourist-trips [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) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNWTO (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “International tourist trips” [dataset]. UNWTO, “145 key tourism statistics” [original data]. Retrieved November 26, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/international-tourist-trips