TRAVEL: Cyprus ranked in top 10 for most visitors per population

Cyprus is ranked 7 in the world when measuring the number of tourists per local inhabitants with Iceland coming top using the same indicator.

The holiday island made it in the top ten by receiving 3,000 tourists per 1,000 citizens – a 3:1 ratio where as Iceland notched up 6,600 visitors per 1,000 population.

Another Mediterranean island, Malta secured second place with 5,300 visitors, while the Bahamas in the Caribbean completed the top three spots with 3,800 visitors. Greece was ranked 13 with 2,400 visitors.

By taking the annual visitor numbers to every sovereign country (with a population of at least 100,000) and comparing them against the total number of citizens, TravelMag.com has compiled this survey on the most and least popular travel destinations.

Numbers for visitor arrivals used for the survey were taken from a report released by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in August 2018.

For countries where such official data was unknown, other sources were used. Population figures for each country were taken from UN Statistics Division data.

Unsurprisingly, at the other end of the scale Somalia, Yemen and Libya came out as the least visited counties, with less than one visitor per 1,000 citizens.

While no UNWTO data was available for these destinations, tourist arrivals are close to zero according to various independent sources, said TravelMag.

The UK has seen a big increase in tourism thanks to sterling’s drop in value as Brexit looms, but still only sees 569 visitors per 1,000 inhabitants.

France received more visitors than any other country in the world at almost 87 million, putting their total at 1,340 per 1,000. Despite a relatively small population, Australia received only 360 visitors per 1,000 inhabitants.

Most Visited Countries:

1. Iceland 6,600

2. Malta 5,300

3. Bahamas 3,800

4. Croatia 3,700

5. Austria 3,400

6. Maldives 3,200

7. Cyprus 3,000

8. Montenegro 2,900

9. Bahrain 2,900

10. Estonia 2,500