(Madrid) – International tourist arrivals has exceeded one billion number for the first time last year, with the Asia-Pacific region posting the biggest increase in foreign visitors, and numbers will rise further in 2013, a UN body said.
The number of international tourist arrivals grew by 4.0 percent to 1.035 billion in 2012, up from 996 million in 2011, the Madrid-based United Nations World Tourism Organisation said in an annual survey.
“2012 was a year of constant economic instability in the entire world, especially in the euro zone. Despite this international tourism managed to maintain its course,” the body’s Secretary General Taleb Rifai told a news conference.
The organisation forecasts international tourist numbers will grow in 2013 although at a slightly lower rate of 3.0-4.0 percent. Global tourism figures were hit hard by the 2008 global financial crisis. Arrivals plunged by 3.9 percent in 2009, its worst performance in 60 years, as the outbreak of the swine flu virus contributed to cash-strapped consumers’ decision to stay home.
But international tourism arrivals bounced back the following year, rising 6.6 percent in 2010 and by 5.0 percent in 2011 even though global economic crisis had not yet ended. The Asia-Pacific region posted the largest growth in visitor arrivals last year with the number of foreign tourists up by 14 million or 6.5 percent to 233 million.
