Tourist Venues

I have some travel related news for you. I just read that a U.S. magazine, Travel and Leisure, conducted a survey and found that Times Square, New York City is the favorite travel destination in the U.S. with more than 39 million visitors last year. That peeked my curiosity about tourism trends today in general, so I went the United Nations World Tourism Organization to find out where those tourist are headed.

The UNWTO collects and collates statistical information on international tourism. It also supposedly encourages countries to make tourism in their nations more user friendly.
According to their stats, the top five places tourists visited in 2010 are
1) France- 76.80 million visitors
2) United States- 59.75 million
3) China- 55.67 million
4) Spain- 52.68 million
5) Italy- 43.63 million

Interesting... I am surprised that France is number one and that Spain is in the top ten. What's amazing to me is that little Malaysia is the 9th most visited place. I wonder why? And the most visited city, list for last year is: 1) Paris- 15.1 million visitors 2) London- 14.6 million 3) New York City- 9.7 million 4) Anatalya- 9.2 million and 5) Singapore-also 9.2 million. Anatalya, Turkey???? What is that about?

The developments in technology and transportation (those low cheap flights, for example) in recent years have made many types of tourism more affordable today. And the affluence in the world now means there has been an up trend in tourism over the last few decades. Travel is now truly a habit of not just the wealthy, but the common man and woman. Tourists have a wide range of budgets and tastes today. They can travel in so many different ways and do so confidently.

So the choices people make for their travel destinations must be changing more often and are no longer stable. The old favorites remain, but their are now places that are hugely popular that were almost unknown 30 years ago. I have plenty of places not yet visited that I would like to see, and some I have no interest in. Hmmmm Don't send me to many of the African countries or Saudi Arabia, for example.

How about you? To what not yet visited place would you most like to travel and where would you go reluctantly?