Bangladesh has the highest ratio of locals to tourists. Photo / iStock
Bangladesh has the highest ratio of locals to tourists. Photo / iStock
A new comparison of the population size of a destination and the number of people who visit it has revealed the most and least touristy countries in the world.
There are also a number of countries that have become much more touristy over the past decade or so, with Georgia, Bhutan and Congo-Brazzaville coming top of the list.
The comparison, by Priceonomics, was made using raw data from the World Bank, which has been tracking international tourists by the number of arrivals since 1981.
For the most and least touristy destinations, Priceonomics looked at the most recent available data, which was from 2014.
Bangladesh, which was once promoted with the slogan "visit Bangladesh before the tourists come", remains the world's least touristy country with 1,273 local per tourist.
This is thanks in part to its huge population size of more than 159 million people.
The country is far more heavily populated by locals than the next countries on the list, Guinea and Moldova, which have 372 and 323 locals per tourist respectively.
Andorra, in contrast, has the highest number of tourists compared to local residents thanks to its popular ski resorts. Photo / iStock
Andorra was the surprise winner as the most touristy country in the world.
Sandwiched between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains, the tiny principality has an estimated population size of just 73,000.
But its popular ski resort, historic churches and pristine lakes attracted more than 2.36million visitors in 2014 - a ratio of more than 32 tourists per local resident.
Andorra is followed by Aruba and Monaco, both favoured by well-heeled jet-setters.
Aruba might be the picture of paradise but the tiny Caribbean island has a lot of tourists visiting it. Photo / iStock
Rather surprisingly, popular destinations like France, Spain and Italy were not among the most touristy destinations.
Neither are any of the world's biggest countries in land-size like Russia, the USA and China.
Priceonomics also looked at the growth rate of the number of tourists to visit a country and found that Georgia had the highest increase in tourists between 2004 and 2014, followed by Bhutan and Congo-Brazzaville, or the Republic of Congo.
However, there are some limitations to the World Bank Data.
For example, a number of countries do not have data attributed to them, either because the numbers are too small or because the data has been impossible to track.
What's more, different countries will have different methods for collecting the data and some tourists who make several visits to the same destinations will be counted multiple times.
