Written by Katie Daly

Short Overview:

This week, the World Economic Forum published a new report which looks at different nations promotional of tourism, through natural and cultural resources as well as their commitment towards sustainability and tourism within their country. This article will explore some of the scorings as looking deeper at one country in particular! 

From the report, the top five countries were joined by an unusual suspect. The top contenders were the usual suspects of Spain, Japan, France and Australia, with the United States also joining them. The newcomer’s tourism has appealed for years with major cities such as New York, Boston and Las Vegas, however, has also began to place an emphasis on other cities and their tourism appeal. As well as this, major tourism events that occur in the USA help to attract mass tourists, think Coachella, the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras. As well as this, the wide range of National Parks the country boasts helps to add to the variety of tourist activities available, increasing the range that the USA attracts.

In the published report, some of the factors taken into account when scoring the countries include safety and security, natural and cultural resources, air transport infrastructure and travel and tourism demand sustainability. As the individual countries are grouped by continents, the USA has been grouped with both South and North America (including Central America) and classed as The Americas. Compared to the other continents, the Americas scored relatively low across the board. The USA is the top scorer in this group, and the largest contributor to Travel and Tourism GDP, both within the area and globally, which shows the growth the USA have had in their Travel and Tourism Sector, which they usually wouldn’t perform so highly on.

Elsewhere, the two top performing regions were the Asia Pacific region and the long-running ‘top-scorer’ the Europe and Eurasia region. In most of the factors taken into account the Europe and Eurasia region outperforms the global performance, in particular Safety and Security and Health and Hygiene, as well as the robust transport infrastructure helping to facilitate travel and tourism within the region. This region has experienced an increased level of Travel and Tourism since the COVID pandemic, due to the robust transport infrastructure in the area as well as a high degree of economic integration compared to other regions.

The Asia Pacific region includes strong performing individual countries such as Japan, Australia, China and South Korea, the first 3 of which rank in the top 10 of the Travel and Tourism Development Index. This performance is particularly impressive due to the harsh effects this region experienced due to COVID, and the restrictions put in place during that time. A reason for its impressive recovery is likely to be the blends of cultural, natural and non-leisure resources, which has helped to appeal to wide range of tourists and helped to stimulate demand in the sector.

The Travel and Tourism Development Index is a comprehensive detailed report which helps to explain certain aspects of tourism, and the economic factors that go into the performance of countries and regions. This is an interesting read and insight for this area of economics, and offers background details, which can be easily analysed into more detail. To find out more I have linked the exact report below, but also an article which explores the USA and its tourist sector, that is less numbers and figures and gives more reasoning. 

Report – https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Travel_and_Tourism_Development_Index_2024.pdf

Article –  https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240617-why-the-us-is-the-top-country-for-tourism-in-2024