Fun fact. The country with the lowest ratio is Bangladesh with less than 1 visitor for every 1,000 residents. Although some countries, like North Korea, don't keep stats.
A great spot to establish a textile business or exploit the emerging tech market but hardly a choice destination for beauty. Sure, the beauty is there, but I'd pass on the Bang for a more civil country with equivalent draw.
@englishsystem, there are plenty of problems with Bangladesh, but "not civil"? That has colonialist undertones. I doubt you meant it that way, but it's still not a fair characterization. Bangladesh has a pretty low violent crime rate and is relatively stable. The worst thing tourists have to look out for is pick-pocketing or people trying to rip you off. Corruption is also a problem, but probably not something you'd run into as much at major tourist attractions. I'll grant that it's more dangerous for women, but even then I think it's okay as long as they are traveling with a male.
I definitely agree with Jerry and Yossarian that there are some very beautiful parts worth seeing outside the cities, and while Bangladesh doesn't have a very large tourism industry, it's something that being developed. Cox's Bazaar, for example, is becoming popular among Westerners. I think tourism will become safer and more feasible in the next few decades, as the country develops.
That's funny...while I was taking the quiz I was wondering what the lowest ratio was and I thought Bangladesh because it's so densely populated and nobody goes there.
I think I pointed out on another quiz you can work it out for north korea. They have organized trips of around 6000 westerners a year. Not sure about Asian countries' visitors. Population is (said to be) 25 million so also lowest on the list with Bangladesh at <1/1000.
Holy cow! We Estonians get nearly 3 million tourists every year. Apparently the old town of Tallinn is famous. Also, some Estonians know how to sell Soviet-related stuff to tourists (because that's what tourists look for here). Then again, Russians often come here for vacations.
The old city center is beautiful and unique (city trips) and Estonia is dirt cheap for Western Europeans (bachelor parties and other debauchery). Additionally you have the excellent ferry connections to Helsinki, offering a convenient day trip for tourists and allowing the Finnish to regularly stock their bars with cheap liquor. Didn't surprise me one bit that Estonia is included.
Vatican most likely wasn't included when I posted that comment. I'm not sure now if the sourceis the same for all countries, if Vatican is here, surely e.g. Singapore should be also.
Not to throw cold water on the quiz, but what constitutes a "visit" to these little postage stamp countries is far different than a visit to a larger one. The typical visit to these places may not even include a single overnight stay and bring very little money into the economy compared to tourists in larger countries that are going to stay awhile. You're never going to convince me that San Marino is twice as "touristy" as Italy or France.
We also have onerous visa requirements, until recently a very strong dollar (and it's still expensive even with the lower exchange rate) and the travelling distances between attractions within Australia are still vast.
Hajjis aren't really tourists, Saudi Arabia gets almost 0 tourism apart from religious pilgrims, and altogether even including Saudis themselves there are maybe 6-8 million pilgrims who make hajj each year, less than a quarter of the total population of the country so the ratio would be much smaller than those listed.
not even close to being true. And the religious pilgrims that go to Mecca are not "religious pilgrims," they are, in fact, believers performing a specific religious duty. They are not tourists in any sense of the word. Unless Catholics taking communion or going to confession are tourists.
Though once in a while there will be an atheist working on contract basis in the country who converted to Islam for the lolz and used his Muslim laminate to get in to Mecca without any intention of performing hajj, but that happens very rarely, and wouldn't be counted in these stats anyway since he had his iqama and was officially a resident of the country at the time.
Catholics who go to confession somewhere they don't live are definitely tourists. Towns like Santiago de Compostella or Lourdes get a huge chunk of their revenue from such tourism.
Taking communion is a specifically prescribed religious duty of Catholicism. Going on vacation somewhere and taking communion in a far away church is not. Performing hajj is a specifically prescribed, highly ritualized religious duty. Hajjis in Mecca are not there sightseeing. The Saudis have bulldozed most of the historically significant sites around the city to make way for more hotels and such. The only significant thing to them is the kabaa. It's very, very different.
You think people in Santiago de Compostela or Lourdes are there for sightseeing? Communion is still a "prescribed religious duty" regardless of where you are in the world. I have no reason to believe that these are somehow "very, very different." It's still pilgrimage.
Where do the Vatican stats come from? Vatican City does not appear in the country stats in the UN World Tourism Organisation link you give. The stats there are for overnight visits, and since Vatican Citiy has no hotels at all, the number of overnight visit tourists would be very few indeed. Even if you count day visitors, there would be no way of counting numbers, because the border is unmarked and unpatrolled and people just wander in and out of the bits they can access, namely Piazza San Pietro (St Peter's Square), the Sistine Chapel, and some museums.
I've been there, and was also surprised that it didn't end up on the list. As a Finn it's also funny to see Estonia up there because I've definitely done my part of boosting those numbers up lol
I have been to seven from these: Vatican, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Austria, Greece, Cyprus and Malta. All of them are cool countries, and fun fact, Liechtenstein has the least visits in Europe
I definitely agree with Jerry and Yossarian that there are some very beautiful parts worth seeing outside the cities, and while Bangladesh doesn't have a very large tourism industry, it's something that being developed. Cox's Bazaar, for example, is becoming popular among Westerners. I think tourism will become safer and more feasible in the next few decades, as the country develops.