The destination of tourists and where they come from are best illustrated by graphs. From these it can quickly be seen that France remains the most popular destination. Indeed, Europe alone receives more than half of all world tourists.In 2018, it was worth about $1.7tn (£1.3tn), or about 2% of total global GDP. Even the UNWTO [United Nations World Tourism Organization] is struggling to keep up, with current figures vastly exceeding expectations.
Not surprisingly China produces more outbound tourists than any other country - by far. 143 million Chinese traveled abroad compared to the next highest, Germany, at 92 million. The chart illustrates very clearly how tourism from Europe and the Americas to Thailand is now a small fraction. I am pretty sure a similar chart for 1990 would show a far larger percentage. One reason for the fall off in gay tourism, perhaps? At least for gay tourists from the west visiting gay venues.
In future the growth of China's outbound tourism seems unstoppable. Granted it started from a zero base since the 1949 revolution right through to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1975. I cannot find a statistic for 1990 but the number of outbound tourists in 1993 was just 3.7 million - and a good few of these were to Hong Kong and Macao.
On spending, figures for 2018 from the UNWTO quoted in a Forbes article show that the Chinese spent nearly a fifth of total spending at $258 billion. U.S. travelers came in second at $135 billion.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/j ... on-holiday
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericrosen/ ... deb0c257ea