Band 8.5 — Table: International Tourism in Four Countries (2024)

The table presents three indicators of international tourism—visitor numbers, revenue and average length of stay—for four countries in 2024.

Overall, Spain dominated both arrivals and earnings, welcoming more visitors than the other three countries combined. Intriguingly, the ranking for length of stay was almost the reverse of that for visitor numbers.

Spain's 85 million arrivals generated US$92 billion, comfortably the highest figures in the table: its visitor total was more than double Thailand's 40 million and roughly fourteen times Brazil's 6 million. Thailand and Japan, earning US$48 billion and US$41 billion respectively from broadly comparable visitor numbers, formed a clear middle tier.

Length of stay, however, told a rather different story. Tourists lingered longest in Brazil, at 12 nights on average—almost twice as long as in Spain, where the typical visit lasted a mere 7 nights despite the country's enormous popularity. This inverse pattern suggests that Brazil attracts fewer but far more committed travellers, whereas Spain's model rests on high volume and short stays.