Arrivals of tourists from abroad per 1,000 people

Description: Number of trips by visitors who arrive from abroad and stay overnight, per 1,000 people in the destination country's population.
Data source: UN Tourism (2025); Population based on various sources (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Unit: arrivals per 1,000 people
Date range: 1995-2024
Last updated: 2026-01-21
Next expected update: 2027-01-21
Managed by: Tuna Acisu

Each trip by the same person is counted separately.
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.

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As a result, the number of arrivals does not necessarily reflect the number of individuals traveling, as one person can generate multiple arrivals.
Per "1,000 people" refers to the calculation of trips per 1,000 individuals within the population of the destination country.
This enables standardized comparison across different population sizes and provides an estimate of tourism intensity.
For instance, if there are "10 arrivals per 1,000 people," it means that among every 1,000 individuals in the population, there are 10 international arrivals.

Frequently asked questions

How did Our World in Data process this 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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Data 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.

"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"

Various sources – Population

Our World in Data builds and maintains a long-run dataset on population by country, region, and for the world, based on various sources.

You can find more information on these sources and how our time series is constructed on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Retrieved on

October 22, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

The long-run data on population is based on various sources, described on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

How to cite

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: Arrivals of tourists from abroad per 1,000 people”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska (2023) - “Tourism”. Data adapted from UN Tourism, Various sources. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261022-215053/grapher/international-tourist-trips-per-1000-people.html [online resource] (archived on October 22, 2026).

How to cite this data

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

UN Tourism (2025); Population based on various sources (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN Tourism (2025); Population based on various sources (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Arrivals of tourists from abroad per 1,000 people” [dataset]. UN Tourism, “UN Tourism Statistics Database”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved October 22, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261022-215053/grapher/international-tourist-trips-per-1000-people.html (archived on October 22, 2026).

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. 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.

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