Preliminary figures from the UN World Tourism Organisation show that there was a 7% global rise in international arrivals in 2017 reaching a total of 1.32 billion.
But one of the destinations to see a year-on-year fall in visitor numbers was the US while the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has already revealed that its international arrivals rose from 76 million in 2016 to more than 82 million last year. The full UNWTO figures will be published in the spring.
UNWTO said that Europe “recorded extraordinary results for such a large and rather mature region” with arrivals rising by 8% year-on-year to 671 million boosted particularly by Mediterranean destinations.
