The countries where tourism is booming – and where it’s declining

Global tourist numbers reached an all-time high in 2025. This fact may well be bemoaned in destinations where rows over overtourism have raged, but it nevertheless marks a significant milestone: the travel industry’s first year of growth above pre-pandemic levels.

According to UN Tourism’s latest World Tourism Barometer, 1.52 billion international overnight trips were made last year, an increase of 4 per cent year-on-year from 2024. While Europe’s perennial favourites stood firm, emerging destinations surged – and some holiday heavyweights slipped down the scale. Below, we assess the big winners and losers.

Brazil’s standout year

South America’s largest country has long lured holidaymakers, but a 37 per cent year-on-year rise in visitors was unprecedented even for Brazil. It came after the Brazilian Agency for International Tourism Promotion (Embratur) launched an initiative known as the International Tourism Acceleration Program (PATI) the previous year. Its goal was simple: to improve the country’s international air connectivity.

“There is no point in the growing international interest in getting to know Brazil if there are no direct flights or short connections at a competitive price,” Embratur’s president Marcelo Freixo said in a statement at the time.

The programme has been a clear success. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, 2025 saw 11,000 more flights to Brazil than in 2024. There were signs too that visitors are turning their gaze away from Rio de Janeiro, with new routes from Europe to cities such as Manaus and Recife.

Flights will also begin this year between Lisbon and São Luís, the gateway to the swirling dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, recently made a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Australians may have been excited to see a non-stop Qantas flight from Sao Paulo to Sydney, but that’s understood to have been a one-off chartered flight for musician Bad Bunny’s tour. There are no direct Brazil flights on the horizon from Australia as yet).

Jeremy Bowen, CEO of Cirium, says: “Brazil is no longer a market that global airlines are cautiously re-entering, they are expanding into it with real conviction.”

With 1.3 million overseas tourists visiting in 2025, compared to 974,000 in 2024, Israel saw a 37 per cent year-on-year increase in arrivals. But this figure is still a long way down on its 2019 peak of 4.55 million, and the latest outbreak of war in the region looks certain to hamper its recovery.

Hot for Iceland

Europe continued to lead the world in terms of overall tourist traffic, with France, Spain, Turkey, Italy, the UK and Germany all among the 10 most visited countries in the world.

However, Europe’s fastest-growing destination last year was Iceland, which saw a 29 per cent jump in visitors – the biggest in the region despite the land of fire and ice being regularly named one of the world’s costliest destinations. Travellers flocked to its volcanic shores and lagoons, driven also by the “coolcation” trend that benefitted other Nordic nations like Finland (up 17 per cent) and Norway ( up 13 per cent).

Into Africa

Although Europe kept its crown in terms of raw numbers, Africa was the continent that experienced the fastest growth.

Its visitor numbers leapt 8 per cent (Europe’s, by comparison, rose only 4 per cent), with huge increases in Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia and Morocco. Egypt’s 20 per cent rise was coupled with a similarly notable increase in tourist spending and coincided with the long-awaited opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza.

Off the beaten track

Perhaps most surprising among the success stories of last year were Vanuatu (up 75 per cent) and Bhutan (up 44 per cent).

Their respective rises are relative to the tiny numbers of tourists who typically venture there (Vanuatu only received 59,000 visitors in 2024). Nevertheless, tour operators are noticing a shift.

Hazel McGuire, chief marketing officer at Intrepid Travel, says: “We are seeing our customers’ desire to travel to emerging, under-the-radar destinations is growing. People are more conscious than ever of overtourism and this is factoring into their holiday decision-making.

“Bhutan has always had a sustainable, regenerative approach to tourism that focuses on ‘high value, low volume’, and in recent years it’s been carrying out campaigns and initiatives to attract more tourists from around the world while still aligning with those values.”

Vanuatu likely absorbed some would-be tourism from neighbouring New Caledonia – which saw traveller numbers drop following civil unrest – but McGuire also notes that its world-class beaches, lush jungles and excellent snorkelling and diving spots have positioned it as a worthy alternative to Fiji and other more crowded Pacific islands.

Falling from favour

Several major destinations witnessed a big fall in visitors last year. Thailand chalked up significantly fewer international arrivals (down 7 per cent), a fact probably not unrelated to its border skirmishes with Cambodia, which, too, fell down the rankings.

Also striking has been America’s “Trump slump”. Arrivals to the country dipped 5 per cent, with experts attributing the decline to more restrictive visa rules, ESTA (visa waiver) price hikes and increasingly invasive security checks.

US policies are also damaging tourism in Cuba, which saw visitor numbers drop steeply last year, partly due to US sanctions imposed on the already crisis-stricken nation. A fresh oil blockade last month was declared “a tragedy for one of the world’s most beloved getaways,“ by travel writer Ruaridh Nicoll.

The bigger, post-pandemic picture

If we take a longer view of the data, a slightly different picture emerges.

Global tourist numbers may have finally bounced back from the COVID-era travel blackout, but that has not been the case for every country. Many in Central and Eastern Europe, for example, are still struggling (the region received 12 per cent fewer visitors last year than in 2019), while Cuba’s drop in tourists is even more pronounced.

Australia’s arrivals are still lagging well behind the numbers seen pre-COVID. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, the number of short-term visitors to Australia in 2025 was 8.9 million, 6 per cent below the 9.46 million who arrived in 2019, though up 8 per cent on 2024 figures.

Other destinations have not only bounced back – they have succeeded in completely transforming their fortunes. One of the most impressive cases is that of Uzbekistan, which was not only visited by five million more travellers in 2025 than in 2019, but has also managed to more than triple its income from tourism.

A longer lens also knocks Africa off the podium for the region with most rapid growth. Bahrain (up 91 per cent), Qatar (up 138 per cent), Saudi Arabia (up 67 per cent) and Jordan (up 30 per cent) soared ahead of their 2019 tourism levels, revealing tourists’ evolving perception of the Middle East as a destination in its own right rather than a stopover.

That was in 2025, however. The recent outbreak of war in the region means the figures for this year will be far less rosy.

The Telegraph, London