Modern day travel has become incredibly easy. Even comparing it to 15 years ago; more routes are available than ever before, travel times have reduced, and costs have typically dropped significantly.
The turn-of-phrase ‘small world‘ is now a common one (although its use may be in decline). In 2014, there were 1.133 billion international tourist arrivals worldwide, with a growth of 4.3% as compared to 1.087 billion in 2013.
Yet parts of the world are still inaccessible through your budget carrier — and some still unexplored. But where are they?
Methodology
Every year the UN World Tourism Organisation publishes a report titled “Tourism Highlights“. For this post I used the 2015 version (data reported is for 2013). The report contains tourism statistics for 217 countries, including inbound tourist arrivals and receipts. Using this data I was able to identify the countries that report the fewest tourists.
Analysis
UNWTOÂ inbound tourists 2013
Did you know? The 3 countries that received the most tourists in 2013 were: 1. France (83.6 mil arrivals), 2. United States (69.9), and 3. Spain (60.6).
UNWTO least touristed regions
If you want to steer clear of tourist traps and other travellers your best bet would be a holiday somewhere in Africa… or Bangladesh.
UNWTO least touristed countries
| -Rank (tourists) | Destination | Inbound Tourists 2013 |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | Rep. Moldova | 96000 |
| 18 | Dominica | 86000 |
| 17 | Sierra Leone | 81000 |
| 16 | Timor-Leste | 79000 |
| 15 | St. Vincent & Gren. | 72000 |
| 14 | San Marino | 71000 |
| 13 | Anguilla | 69000 |
| 12 | Djibouti | 63000 |
| 11 | Liechtenstein | 60000 |
| 10 | Guinea | 56000 |
| 9 | Tonga | 51000 |
| 8 | Micronesia FSM | 42000 |
| 7 | Solomon Is | 24000 |
| 6 | American Samoa | 20000 |
| 5 | Montserrat | 7000 |
| 4 | Niue | 7000 |
| 3 | Kiribati | 6000 |
| 2 | Marshall Is | 5000 |
| 1 | Tuvalu | 1000 |
These 19 countries were all reported to receive less than 100k inbound tourists in 2013.
There were 91 countries in 2013 that received less than 1 million inbound tourists.
Did you know? The 3 countries that received the fewest tourists in 2013 were: 191. Kiribati (6000 arrivals), 192. Marshall Islands (5000), 193. Tuvalu (1000).
Improvements
This post was inspired by Gunnar Garfors, who in 2015 compiled a list of the least touristed countries from a wide array of sources beyond only the UNWTO.
His list of 25 countries is very similar, with some notable differences in the bottom 3 countries: 23. Tuvalu (1200 inbound tourists), 24. Somalia (400), 25. Nauru (160).
tl;dr
According to the UNWTO the 3 countries that have the lowest number of inbound tourists in 2014 were: 191. Kiribiti (6000Â inbound tourists), 192. Marshall Islands (5000), 193. Tuvalu (1000)