While I absolutely love to travel, there's one aspect of traveling that I can't stand. The crowds.
It's something that you'll just need to accept when visiting popular tourist attractions, especially during peak season. It's not uncommon to have a 2-3 hour wait to get into the Louvre in Paris for example, during the summer.
And it's also one of the reasons that beach escapes to secluded islands like the Maldives and Bora Bora are so desirable.
That's why I was particularly intrigued by this article over at the Daily Mail, which lists the 10 least-visited countries in the world based on number of tourists in 2013. Here's the list, as you can see the numbers really drop off starting at #3:
10. Palau (2013 visitors: 105,000)
9. Moldova (2013 visitors: 96,000)
8. East Timor (2013 visitors: 78,000)
7. Dominica (2013 visitors: 78,000)
6. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (2013 visitors: 72,000)
5. Anguilla (2013 visitors: 69,000)
4. Liechtenstein (2013 visitors: 60,000)
3. Niue (2013 visitors: 7,000)
2. Montserrat (2013 visitors: 7,000)
1. Kiribati (2013 visitors: 6,000)
Island of Kiribati
While a couple of those countries have been on my radar, such as Palau and Liechtenstein, for the most part I hadn't heard of many of these places. To give some frame of reference, here are the top 5 tourist destinations from 2013:
1. France (2013 visitors: 84.7 million)
2. United States (2013 visitors: 69.8 million)
3. Spain (2013 visitors: 60.7 million)
4. China (2013 visitors: 55.7 million)
5. Italy (2013 visitors: 47.7 million)
Anyone interested in visiting one of the least-visited countries?
Most of the time there is only 1 flight a week to Niue.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, makes sense given the low # of visitors. Have you been?
DeleteWould be further interesting if the stats can somehow be expressed as visitors per square kilometer of (visitable?) land in the country. Spain and Italy would then appear far more popular than the United States, and the least visited countries, which I assume are tiny, may look less pathetic.
ReplyDeleteYou are right Peter! Spain and Italy are also most popular destination in the US. I'm a tourist and like to visit in different places and country in the world. I visited Spain and Italy many times sometime with my family and sometime with my friends. Last time I visited the Italy with my business partner for business work before bus tours dc. The Rome is the capital city of this country. If offers a breathtaking view for all visitors. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Roman Forum, Grand Canal and Amalfi Coast are the most famous tourist attractions in Italy.
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