Good news for all the people that are working in the tourist industry. Despite all the new war zones, natural disasters and financial crisis, latest stats show that the tourism in the world is rising.

According to UNWTO (World tourism organization), year 2013 was significantly more successful than year 2012. In 2013 there were more than 900 million international tourist arrivals which is at least 5% more compared to the tourist arrivals and arrangements in 2012. Other good news is that this trend is expected to continue and 2014 could end with over one billion of those arrivals.

Three regions have even more than 5% raise – Europe, Asia and the Pacific. Interesting fact is that tourists in Europe are more eager to explore the parts of Europe that were neglected in the past. For example former socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe had 7% more visitors while the well known Mediterranean destinations had 6% more visitors than last year. That is way more than the predicted 1-2% at the beginning of 2013.

We have similar numbers for the Asian and Pacific region too. Overall they have attracted 6% more tourists and it is worth mentioning that Southeast Asia (especially Thailand) had even 12% more tourists visiting their famous resorts.

Another interesting fact is that even the rest of the regions have positive numbers. For example North and South America had 3% raise while Africa had 5% more visitors.  It is good to point out that since the situation in Libya and Tunisia is more relaxed these countries are the main reason for this raise. The Middle East still has trouble to attract tourists mainly because of the political situation and the never-ending conflicts and that’s why they have accommodated only 0,3% more visitors compared to 2012.

If we look the increase of tourists by certain countries that are known as tourist destinations it is worth mentioning that Thailand had a rise of 28%, Turkey 13%, Japan 23% and UK 18%. Another country that is known as a popular holiday destination – Greece had a good improvement and they had 15% more tourists.

As a conclusion we can say that we can expect even more tourist arrangements throughout the world in 2014 and the main reason for that is the financial stabilization of the market and the increased peace efforts that are made in areas affected with conflicts.