The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) has named the world’s top tourism countries in its latest report. The ‘UNWTO Tourism Highlights, 2014 Edition’ shows that France retains its status as the world’s favourite tourism destination, with 83 million visitors annually.
Some of the top ten are among the favourite places for Brits to buy homes overseas – fantastic news if you’re hoping to earn income from your holiday home abroad.
For Europe, the report said: “Growth in absolute terms was led by Southern and Mediterranean Europe, which reported some 11 million more international arrivals (up 6%) in 2013. The subregion’s largest destination, Spain, recorded a sound 6% increase in arrivals to 61 million. Other major destinations such as Greece (+16%), Portugal (+8%), Turkey (+6%) and Croatia (+6%) also saw robust growth last year.”
The UNWTO top ten tourism destinations are:
| Rank | Country | Number of tourists (millions) |
| 1 | France | 83.0 |
| 2 | United States | 69.8 |
| 3 | Spain | 60.7 |
| 4 | China | 55.7 |
| 5 | Italy | 47.7 |
| 6 | Turkey | 37.8 |
| 7 | Germany | 31.5 |
| 8 | United Kingdom | 31.2 |
| 9 | Russian Federation | 28.4 |
| 10 | Thailand | 26.5 |
