The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has published the official results for 2021 – one shortcoming, which I completed. Accordingly, 421 million people made touristic trips in 2021. This number lagged 71% behind tourism in 2019. (The loss, which was 73% in 2020, could only decrease by 2% in 2021) In 2021, approximately 1 billion tourists could not travel due to the pandemic restrictions that continue at regular intervals. While the Far East and Asian countries received the heaviest blow from the pandemic, Europe started to normalize and return to the old days last year. The Caribbean and Eastern Mediterranean countries were the destinations with the least losses compared to 2019.
According to unconfirmed data, 421 million trips in 2021 were distributed as follows:
1. France (UNWTO not yet published, my guess is 40-45 million)
2. Mexico 31.9 million
3. Spain 31.2 million
4. Turkey 29.9 million
5. Italy 26.3 million
6. USA 22.1 million
7. Greece 14.7 million
8. Austria 12.7 million
9. Germany 11.7 million
10. Croatia 10.6 million
Let’s take a look at what this Table has to say:
1. *The most important winner of the corona was Mexico. Mexico, which ranked 7th in 2019, ranked 3rd in 2020 and 2nd in 2021. Although it is constantly on the agenda with criminal cases, the biggest tourist source of Mexico, which is the 2nd with the contribution of Mexican citizens living in the USA, comes from the USA and Canada with 80%.
2. *Turkey has become one of the tourism destinations with the lowest loss by keeping the damage caused by the corona around 40% in 2021 compared to 2019, thus rising to the 4th place in the world for the first time in its history. Turkey’s share in world tourism, which surpassed Italy and America, was 7%.
3. * Spain, which lost 50 million tourists in 2021 compared to 2019, became one of the losers of the corona process.
4. *China, which was the 4th in the world with 65 million tourists in 2019, was completely deleted from the tourism world during the corona process.
5. *The shining star of the Far East, Thailand, while hosting 40 million tourists in 2019, fell to the 53rd rank with 400 thousand tourists in 2021.
6. *Greece, which entered the season with a target of 25 million tourists, ranked 6th with 14.7 million.
7. *The winner of the Corona process was the Mediterranean basin. The 5 countries in the top 10 of 2021 are Mediterranean countries.
8. *Croatia placed 10th for the first time in its history.
