International tourist arrivals rapidly increasing
By Dan Peltier, Skift
The World Travel & Tourism Council projects the world will welcome nearly 1.8 billion international visitor arrivals per year by 2025, a 58 percent increase from the 1.1 billion international arrivals who crossed borders in 2014.
These international tourists will certainly contribute to a travel industry experiencing faster growth than the wider global economy but the money tourists spend in their own countries continues dwarfing that of international tourists traveling abroad. This reality has long defined visitor spending in destinations and the status quo won’t see significant changes in the near future, the World Travel & Tourism Council projects.
Considering global domestic travel spending made up 72 percent of travel and tourism’s contribution to global GDP last year, the organization released forecasts this week which point to domestic travel spending growing slightly faster than foreign visitor spending in 2015, 3.7 percent vs. 2.8 percent and accounting for $3.7 trillion and $1.4 trillion, respectively, of the world’s total GDP.