The most visited countries in the world are France, with 102.0 million international tourist arrivals, Spain, with 93.7 million, and the United States, with 72.3 million, according to UN Tourism’s figures for 2024, the latest full year it has published for every country. China (64.9 million), Turkey (60.5 million) and Italy (57.7 million) follow. Those numbers count overnight trips by foreign visitors, not individual people and not spending, and that distinction changes the picture in ways worth understanding before reading the table. Measured by how much visitors spend, the United States is first by a wide margin.
What UN Tourism Counts: Overnight Arrivals at the Border
UN Tourism, the United Nations agency based in Madrid that was called the UNWTO until 2023, compiles the standard ranking in its World Tourism Barometer and its annual International Tourism Highlights. The headline measure is international tourist arrivals. A tourist, in the agency’s definition, is someone who travels to a place outside their usual environment for at least one night and less than one consecutive year, for leisure, business or other purposes. Day-trippers are excluded: a family that drives from Germany into France for lunch does not count, but the same family staying one night in a hotel in Strasbourg does.
Three features of the measure matter. First, it counts arrivals, not people. A Belgian who visits France four times in a year is four arrivals. Second, it is a border-crossing statistic, so it favours countries with many neighbours and lots of short trips, one reason European countries take six of the top ten places. Third, each country collects its own data, and UN Tourism publishes what national statistics offices report. The agency also ranks countries by international tourism receipts, the money foreign visitors spend on accommodation, food, shopping and transport, and by expenditure, what a country’s own residents spend abroad.
Rival Figures: Turkey, Hong Kong and France’s Hotel Nights
Because every country counts differently, the same year can produce different totals. Turkey is the clearest case. UN Tourism records 60.5 million arrivals for 2024, while Wikipedia’s article on Turkish tourism, drawing on national figures, gives about 52.6 million foreign tourists that year, along with record tourism revenue of US$61.1 billion. The gap comes from what each count includes, so it is worth naming the source whenever you quote a Turkish figure.
Hong Kong appears in the global top ten with 45.0 million arrivals in 2024, level with Mexico, even though it is part of China. UN Tourism lists Hong Kong and Macau as separate destinations from mainland China, and most of Hong Kong’s visitors come from the mainland, especially since the Individual Visit Scheme began in 2003; Macau recorded another 34.9 million arrivals. Added together, China, Hong Kong and Macau would exceed France on paper, but much of that traffic is mainland residents crossing an internal boundary.
France’s first place also comes with a caveat. By hotel nights it falls well down the table, with about 147 million, behind the United States, Spain, Italy, China and Turkey. France works partly as a transit country: many visitors pass through on the way somewhere else, and many do not stay in hotels at all, so they add to arrivals without adding much to nights or spending.
The 2024 Top Ten, from France to Germany
In 2024 the world recorded close to 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals, and UN Tourism puts the total for 2025 at 1.52 billion, up 4 percent. These are the ten leading destinations for 2024, the most recent year with a complete global ranking.
| Rank | Destination | International arrivals, 2024 | Change on 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | 102.0 million | +2.0% |
| 2 | Spain | 93.7 million | +10.1% |
| 3 | United States | 72.3 million | +9.0% |
| 4 | China | 64.9 million | +82.8% |
| 5 | Turkey | 60.5 million | +9.8% |
| 6 | Italy | 57.7 million | +0.8% |
| 7 | Mexico | 45.0 million | +7.3% |
| 8 | Hong Kong (China) | 45.0 million | +32.3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | 41.7 million | +12.0% |
| 10 | Germany | 37.5 million | +7.7% |
France reached 100.0 million arrivals in 2023 and edged up to 102.0 million in 2024. Paris pulls in much of that traffic: a 2023 ranking of France’s most visited cultural sites puts Disneyland Paris first with about 15 million, followed by the Sacré-Cœur Basilica (13.5 million), the Louvre (8.9 million), the Palace of Versailles (8.1 million) and the Eiffel Tower (6.3 million). Beyond the capital, the Loire Valley, the Alps ski resorts and the Mediterranean coast spread visitors across the country, and France has 56 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Spain grew faster, up 10.1 percent to 93.7 million. Its tourist industry took off after 1959, built on summer beach holidays for visitors from the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries and the United States. The pandemic shows how quickly the numbers can move: arrivals fell to 18.9 million in 2020, recovered to 71.6 million in 2022, and reached a new record of about 97 million in 2025.
China’s 82.8 Percent Rebound, Mexico and the Rest of the Ten
China made the biggest jump in the table. After reporting no comparable figure for 2022, it recorded 35.5 million arrivals in 2023 and 64.9 million in 2024, an increase of 82.8 percent that took it back to fourth place. Turkey (60.5 million) and Italy (57.7 million) follow. Italy grew by only 0.8 percent in 2024, but both kept rising in 2025, when Turkey reported about 62 million arrivals and Italy 61.5 million. Much of Turkey’s draw comes from two places: seaside resorts along its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, and Istanbul, the former Byzantine and Ottoman capital, with the Hagia Sophia, Topkapı Palace and the Grand Bazaar. Italy’s tourist trade goes back to the European aristocrats of the Grand Tour, which began in the seventeenth century and flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth, and today it also relies on Alpine and Apennine ski resorts and a long coastline.
In the Americas, the United States and Mexico dominate. Most visitors to Mexico come from the United States and Canada, a pattern that dates to the 1880s, when the first direct railways across the border made Mexico a short trip for American tourists. Canada is a distant third in the Americas, with 20.0 million arrivals in 2024. Rounding out the top ten are the United Kingdom (41.7 million) and Germany (37.5 million); just outside are Japan (36.9 million), Greece (36.0 million) and Thailand (35.5 million).
Each region has its own leader, and the regional tables show how lopsided world travel is. Europe received 793.5 million international arrivals in 2025, more than half the world total, and beyond the big four its leaders include Greece (38.0 million in 2025), Austria (33.5 million), Portugal (29.0 million in 2024) and the Netherlands (22.4 million). The Americas received 213.4 million arrivals in 2024; after the United States, Mexico and Canada, the next largest were the Dominican Republic (8.5 million) and Brazil (6.7 million), which jumped to 9.3 million in 2025. In Asia, after China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and Macau, the leaders were Saudi Arabia (29.7 million), Malaysia (25.0 million), the United Arab Emirates (18.7 million, the figure reported for Dubai), Vietnam (17.5 million) and South Korea (16.4 million). Africa as a whole welcomed about 75.4 million arrivals in 2024, fewer than Spain alone; Morocco led with 17.4 million, ahead of Egypt (15.8 million), Tunisia (10.3 million) and South Africa (8.9 million).
Receipts: Where the United States Overtakes France
Ranking by money instead of arrivals reshuffles the list. In 2025 the United States earned US$213.0 billion from international visitors, far ahead of Spain (US$113.8 billion), the United Kingdom (US$89.6 billion) and France (US$84.0 billion), with Japan fifth at US$64.0 billion. Part of the reason is the mix of trips: a long-haul holiday in the United States and a weekend drive across a European border each count as one arrival, but they involve very different amounts of spending. Japan shows the same effect from the other side: with 36.9 million arrivals in 2024 it sits just outside the top ten by visitors, yet it is fifth by receipts.
The same tables also rank the countries whose residents spend most abroad, and here China is first: Chinese travellers spent about US$254 billion on international trips in 2025, ahead of Americans (US$191.7 billion), with Germans (US$124.9 billion in 2024) and Britons (US$111.5 billion) next. Chinese outbound spending has more than doubled since 2022, when it stood at US$114.8 billion.
The preliminary 2025 arrival numbers point in different directions. Spain reported a record 96.8 million arrivals and Italy 61.5 million. The United States recorded 68.3 million, down from about 72 million in 2024, and its receipts slipped by 0.3 percent, while Japan’s receipts rose 17.7 percent and China’s 37.3 percent. France had not yet published its 2025 figure in UN Tourism’s tables, though Wikipedia’s article on French tourism puts the 2025 total at about 102 million again. Until the full 2025 ranking appears, France, Spain and the United States remain the top three.
For the places that draw these crowds, see the most visited cities in the world and the most visited landmarks, or compare the ranking with UNESCO World Heritage Sites by country, where France, Spain and Italy also sit near the top.