Tourism Breaking News
The World Economic Forum published its 2024 edition of its Travel & Tourism Development Index (TTDI) which measures factors and policies that enable sustainable and resilient development of the tourism sector. It offers insights into tourism economies’ strengths and areas for improvement, and the interconnected nature of tourism development, as well as facilitating strategic planning and multistakeholder dialogue to encourage sustainable growth.
United States
The United States is the top scorer in the TTDI and the largest contributor to T&T GDP, both within the Americas region and globally. While the recent increase in sector wages has helped contribute to climbing operation costs, it has also helped partially bridge the T&T sector’s historically low wages in countries such as the United States. Thanks to typical advantages ranging from favourable business environments and open travel policies to well-developed transport, tourism and ICT infrastructure and natural, cultural and non-leisure attractions, United States ranked highest.
Portugal
The growth in ‘bleisure’ travel and digital nomads has created new opportunities for businesses and destinations that can offer favourable conditions for business travel and leisure activities. In particular, economies that combine strong ICT infrastructure and healthcare standards, relatively reasonable cost of living, favourable visa policies and rich tourism attractions rank among the most attractive for digital nomads, with countries like Portugal and Spain ranking among the top for attractiveness for this new market.
Uzbekistan
Newly ranked developing country of Uzbekistan experienced the greatest growth in TTDI scores between 2019 and 2024. While most high-income economies have experienced slight changes in their TTDI scores, the performance of Uzbekistan (+7.8%, 94th to 78th) has shown the most improvement in both score and rank compared to 2019. T&T enabling conditions in developing economies continue to improve, but far more is needed to close the sector-enabling gap. Located in Central Asia, Uzbekistan is part of the Turkic world.
India
India climbs to the 39th position overall and ranks the highest in South Asia among the lower-middle-income economies. Earlier, India was ranked 54th in 2021 published index. It is home to some of the largest tourism economies in the world and ranks near the top for natural, cultural and non-leisure assets. The Index results underscore the pivotal role the development of natural, cultural, and non-leisure resources plays in driving tourism demand, with tourism Resource dimension scores correlating with tourist demand. Notably, the location of natural and cultural assets is less closely associated with economic development, creating opportunities for developing economies such as India that has a strong portfolio of such assets.
Saudi Arabia
Travel and tourism enabling conditions in developing economies continue to improve, but far more is needed to close the sector-enabling gap. Low to upper-middle-income economies accounted for 52 out of the 71 economies that have improved their TTDI scores since 2019. Saudi Arabia (+5.7%, 50th to 41st) and the United Arab Emirates (+4.4%, 25th to 18th) are the only high-income economies to rank among the top 10 most improved between 2019 and 2024. Saudi Arabia is the second biggest tourist destination in the Middle East with over 16 million visiting in 2017. Although most tourism in Saudi Arabia still largely involves religious pilgrimages, there is growth in the leisure tourism sector. As the tourism sector has been largely boosted lately, the sector is expected to a significant industry for Saudi Arabia, reducing its dependence on oil revenues. This is proved as tourism sector is expected to generate $25 billion in 2019.
LIST
1 United States
2 Spain
3 Japan
4 France
5 Australia
6 Germany
7 United Kingdom
8 China
9 Italy
10 Switzerland
11 Canada
12 Portugal
13 Singapore
14 Korea, Rep.
15 Austria
16 Netherlands
17 Denmark
18 United Arab Emirates
19 Sweden
20 Finland
21 Greece
22 Indonesia
23 Belgium
24 Ireland
25 New Zealand
26 Brazil
27 Poland
28 Luxembourg
29 Türkiye
30 Cyprus
31 Chile
32 Iceland
33 Czech Republic
34 Malta
35 Malaysia
36 Estonia
37 Hungary
38 Mexico
39 India
40 Bulgaria
41 Saudi Arabia
42 Slovenia
43 Romania
44 Lithuania
45 Georgia
46 Croatia
47 Thailand
48 Israel
49 Argentina
50 Colombia
