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Tourism contribution to GDP

Description

Percentage of a country's that comes directly from tourism, including spending by visitors and the industries that serve them.

Data source
UN Tourism (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Unit
%
Date range
2008-2023
Last updated
2026-01-21
Next expected update
2027-01-21
Managed by
Tuna Acisu
  • This indicator shows how much tourism directly contributes to a country’s economy.
  • It captures the value created when visitors spend money in the country, for example on accommodation, food, transport, entertainment, shopping, and other services.
  • This includes not only tourism-specific industries (like hotels and airlines), but also other industries that supply goods and services to visitors. It also includes taxes on the goods and services that tourists buy, minus any subsidies.
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  • It adds together the value created by these activities, known as gross value added.
  • The result is expressed as a share of the country’s total , showing how important tourism is to the overall economy.
  • This indicator is used in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 8.9.1) to track progress in promoting sustainable tourism.

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.

Read about our data pipeline

Documentation from data sources

Principal data source

Tourism Direct GDP (TDGDP) is defined as the sum of the part of gross value added (at basic prices) generated by all industries in response to internal tourism consumption plus the amount of net taxes on products and imports included within the value of this expenditure at purchasers' prices.

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"

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: Tourism contribution to GDP”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska (2023) - “Tourism”. Data adapted from UN Tourism. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/tourism-gdp-proportion-of-total-gdp.html [online resource] (archived on November 2, 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) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN Tourism (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Tourism contribution to GDP” [dataset]. UN Tourism, “UN Tourism Statistics Database” [original data]. Retrieved November 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/tourism-gdp-proportion-of-total-gdp.html (archived on November 2, 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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