Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report: Top 10 tourism industries

by Anna Brones on

If you’re curious as to what countries have the most conducive environments for tourism, you might want to check out the second annual World Economic Forum Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008. Basically it’s a report full of a lot of economic figures used to measure how good tourism industries are in countries around the world. This year’s report put a special emphasis on economic development and environmental sustainability. Here are the top ten:

1. Switzerland
2. Austria
3. Germany
4. Australia
5. Spain
6. United Kingdom
7. United States
8. Sweden
9. Canada
10. France

I’ve been to 7 out of the top 10, meaning that the tourism boards are probably doing their job — or I’m just visiting popular destinations. Surprisingly, popular backpacker destinations like Cambodia, Vietnam, and Nepal are at the bottom of the list. For the complete PDF of rankings go here.

The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report Ranks How Attractive Countries Are For Travel Investment

by Willy Volk on

The World Economic Forum recently released its Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report. According to Jennifer Blanke, Senior Economist of the Forum, the Index is “not a ‘beauty contest’, or a statement about the attractiveness of a country.” Rather, the Index measures factors that make it attractive to develop the travel and tourism industry of individual countries.

Of course, as many travel destinations are location-specific — you can’t have an attraction centered around Iguazu Falls if you live in Lichtenstein — but if you’ve got loads of money to invest in a new resort, you probably don’t want to put it in a dangerous or un-business-friendly location. Duh.

Anyway, according to the report, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany took the top 3 spots, for a variety of reasons, while the rest of the Top 10 included:

Personally, I found it interesting that the UAE, home to the future Louvre expansion, ranked 18.

The bottom spots are held almost exclusively held by African nations:

Of course, this isn’t very surprising, but I was amused by the fact that Malawi ranked so low. A few years ago, I toyed with the idea of opening a dive shop on Lake Malawi. The area is absolutely beautiful, the air temperature is comfortable year-round, and the water temperature is also very nice. Moreover, labor is virtually free. Anyway, my point is you should probably weigh everything before investing. Just because something ranks low on this list, doesn’t mean it isn’t the *perfect* spot for you and your needs.