The global tourism rebound continues, but unevenly, according to a new industry report. Some destinations have comfortably surpassed their pre-pandemic visitor numbers; others remain 30% below. The disparity is driven less by health considerations and more by visa policy, airline route decisions, currency strength, and the willingness of countries to invest in tourism marketing through the lean years.
The report draws on data from member states, major airlines, and an aggregated booking dataset covering most of the world's mid- and large-sized tour operators. While the methodology is necessarily imperfect — visitor counts vary in how they are defined across jurisdictions — the broad trends are clear and consistent across data sources.
Winners and laggards
The standout winners are small to mid-sized destinations that invested in marketing during the downturn and that benefit from favourable currency positions. Several Mediterranean countries are now seeing visitor numbers 15 to 25% above their pre-pandemic peaks. So are a handful of Southeast Asian destinations, particularly those that streamlined visa-on-arrival processes during the slow years.
The laggards are concentrated in two categories. The first is destinations that depend heavily on long-haul travellers from a small number of source markets; when those source markets have been slow to recover their outbound travel, the destination has had little ability to compensate. The second is destinations where visa or entry processes have remained cumbersome, even as competitors have simplified theirs.
The route-network factor
One of the report's more underappreciated findings concerns airline route decisions. During the pandemic, many airlines cut routes that they have not restored, and the decisions about which routes to restore have shaped tourism flows in ways that no destination marketing campaign can offset. A country with three direct international connections enjoys a structurally different tourism economy from one with twelve, regardless of what either does on the marketing side.
Several destinations have responded by paying airlines directly — through landing-fee waivers, marketing-cost-sharing agreements, or, in a few cases, route guarantees — to maintain or restore service. The economics of such arrangements remain controversial, but they have demonstrably worked in the destinations that have pursued them most aggressively.
Friction in popular destinations
The report also flags rising friction in popular destinations between residents and short-term rentals, an issue likely to dominate municipal politics in several capitals over the coming year. Several major cities have already introduced or tightened short-term-rental restrictions, and a handful have begun experimenting with visitor caps in particularly congested neighbourhoods.
The friction is real but, the report argues, manageable. Destinations that have engaged residents in tourism-policy decisions — through neighbourhood-level consultations, transparent data on visitor flows, and clear mechanisms for redistributing tourism revenue locally — have generally fared better than those that have not. "Tourism is a service economy," one of the report's authors said. "And like any service economy, it depends on the consent of the people who provide the service."