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Data

Spending by international visitors while visiting a country

What you should know about this indicator

  • Total international tourism receipts measure all the money a country earns from foreign visitors.
  • This includes spending within the country (accommodation, food, transport, entertainment, shopping, cruises) plus fares paid to the country's airlines.
  • All types of foreign visitors are included, such as students and seasonal workers, which can be significant in certain countries.
Spending by international visitors while visiting a country
Money received by the destination country from foreign visitors, including spending on accommodation, food, local transport, entertainment, shopping, and fares paid to the country’s own airlines. The data is expressed in current US dollars and is not adjusted for inflation or differences in living costs between countries.
Source
UN Tourism (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 21, 2026
Next expected update
January 2027
Date range
1995–2024
Unit
current US$

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

UN Tourism – UN Tourism Statistics Database

UN World Tourism Organization 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
January 21, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.untourism.int/tourism-statistics/tourism-statistics-database
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 (2025). UN Tourism Statistics Database, Madrid. Data updated on 23 December 2025. More information: https://www.untourism.int/tourism-statistics/tourism-statistics-database"

UN World Tourism Organization 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
January 21, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.untourism.int/tourism-statistics/tourism-statistics-database
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 (2025). UN Tourism Statistics Database, Madrid. Data updated on 23 December 2025. More information: https://www.untourism.int/tourism-statistics/tourism-statistics-database"

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.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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: Spending by international visitors while visiting a country”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska (2023) - “Tourism”. Data adapted from UN Tourism. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260417-112857/grapher/spending-by-international-visitors-while-visiting-a-country.html [online resource] (archived on April 17, 2026).

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:

UN Tourism (2025) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN Tourism (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Spending by international visitors while visiting a country” [dataset]. UN Tourism, “UN Tourism Statistics Database” [original data]. Retrieved April 17, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260417-112857/grapher/spending-by-international-visitors-while-visiting-a-country.html (archived on April 17, 2026).

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