Asia drives rise in 2016 world tourism numbers — UN

MADRID: The number of international tourists rose by four per cent worldwide to 1.2 billion in 2016 as Asians travelled more, but security fears hit visitor arrivals in Europe, the World Tourism Organisation ( WTO) said yesterday.

This represents the seventh consecutive year of growth since 2009, when global tourism figures declined four percent as the financial crisis and an outbreak of swine flu saw cashstrapped people stay at home.

The number of people living in Asia and discovering both their own region and the rest of the world rose eight per cent compared to 2015, the Madridbased body said.

The Asia- Pacific area, meanwhile, proved a popular destination – the second most visited region after Europe.

But the UN body cautioned that while still blessed with 620 million tourists last year, the growth in the number of visitors to Europe had slowed due to security concerns.

WTO chief Taleb Rifai told reporters the results in Europe were “very mixed,” saying some destinations recorded “a doubledigit growth rate and some others a flat rate.”

The Americas registered a growth of four percent in visitor numbers, the body said.

Africa, meanwhile, recovered from a sharp drop in 2015 due to security fears, recording an eight percent growth.

The Middle-East, however, saw a four percent drop in the arrival of tourists.

Rifai refused to give a muchanticipated ranking of the most visited countries, saying this would be unveiled at a later date.

In 2015, France ranked number one, followed by the United States and Spain.

But France has been hard hit by extremist attacks in the past two years, and there are fears this has impacted tourist arrivals.

Paris, for one, has seen a drop in tourists after jihadists sowed terror in the French capital in November 2015, killing 130 people.

Frederic Valletoux, the tourism chief for the Paris region, told AFP last year that the area hadn’t recovered, and that the impact was “lasting and completely unprecedented.”

Tourism represents 10 percent of global gross domestic product ( GDP), seven percent of international trade and 30 percent of service exports, according to the WTO.