I was intrigued by the idea of comparing tourist population with area, so I looked at the top six tourist destinations and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. (I only did the top six because … well, I needed a bigger envelope.)
France: 0.008 km² per tourist (79.1 M tourists, 674K km²)
Spain: 0.008 km² per tourist (58.5 M tourists, 504K km²)
US: 0.192 km² per tourist (51.1 M tourists, 9,826K km²)
China: 0.193 km² per tourist (49.6 M tourists, 9,598K km²)
Italy: 0.007 km² per tourist (41.1 M tourists, 301K km²)
UK: 0.008 km² per tourist (30.1 M tourists, 245K km²)
In other words, the density of tourists in the U.S. and China is about the same as in Kuwait (because both countries have a lot of area). The density of tourists in France, Spain, Italy and UK is about the same, though slightly lower, as the density of tourists in Belize.
I have always wanted to visit Kergulen Island. It started when I was looking at a globe for the biggest place I had never heard of. It really is a big island for almost literally no one ever visiting. I read on another site that no one had ever traversed the length of the island. That may be because of inhospitable terrain, terrible weather and no natural resources.
What about Nauru, they have few tourist facilities? And don’t forget remote parts of countries. I’m sure millions visit Russia, but how many of these millions go to Irkutsk? Probably most go to Moscow or St Petersburg. Same for African nations how many people travel outside of national capitals?
Bhutan only got about 7,000 tourists in 1999 according to this. Not sure how much that has increased, but with the restrictions on tourism, I would suspect not a whole lot.
There are places in the USA- PR for example- that are not visited much by tourists.
There are also a number of small towns in Baja that aren’t tourist traps. When last I visited Bahia de Los Angeles was very non touristy. Fishing and beach were fabulous.
In addition to accommodations like that being available, consider that they are close enough to Newfoundland for day excursions. The place is very tiny - while it might not see that many tourists in absolute terms, I suspect it’s generally crawling with them in terms of density.
Pitcairn was my bet as well. It only has 48 people on it and no airport or any good boat dock. It would be a killer to even even get there. Somalia isn’t a hotbed of tourism either. I am surprised that Belize was named. It is supposed to be a great travel destination second only to Costa Rica in Central America and they speak English there. Nicaragua would be a much worse choice. I have been to Managua, Nicaragua briefly and all I call say is Oh Boy. The poverty and desperation is completely clear even when you are on approach to the airport. Military vehicles surround your plane when you arrive.
Actually, I think this is true for pretty much any country in the world. For most people, visiting the Netherlands means visiting Amsterdam and visiting the Czech Republic means visiting Prague. And even in those touristy cities, it doesn’t require much of an effort to find places that are relatively calm and quiet and still interesting. So if you don’t like tourists, just go to a country you like in a quiet time of the year and when there, get the hell of the beaten track, avoid the touristy places and start enjoying.
In many places, people don’t need a visa, let alone a visa specifically for tourists. Still, I wouldn’t know how the money or time spent (one of the statistics regularly collected by those interested in tourism is nights spent in a hotel anually) somewhere by ‘tourist tourists’ is measured as distinct from money and time spent by regular joes, travelling terrorists, mercenaries, missionaries, business men, international spies, prostitutes and what have you.
And those are two spots where most of the tourists (I’d say over 90%) are concentrated on a few points. For Spain that would be the mediterranean coast, the isles, and the touristy areas within Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao and Toledo. Come to Pamplona outside Sanfermines and you’re likely to be the only tourist in the whole of Estafeta.
Yes, as mentioned in your link Bhutan requires you to convert a large amount of money into local currency – US$165 to $200 per day. Supposedly to keep out the riff-raff.
I’d guess North Korea would be another little-visited place. You can go there, but visits are highly orchestrated, and it’s just not a lot of folks’ idea of fun.
Of the destinations that you might actually want to go to, Australia does pretty well in terms of giving you space: it’s at 1.38km/sq per tourist. Of course, there are large areas you’d never want to go to, but still…
Apparently you need special permission to visit places like Tristan da Cunha and Ascension, and I’ve heard that the locals on Tristan Da Cunha don’t like tourists very much at all, which is a shame because one day I’d like to visit all of the remaining British Overseas Territories, much as Simon Winchester did in Outposts: Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire…
Well, yes, Nava, the larger the country, the more likely there are to be large tracts of land unsuitable for tourists: residential areas, farmland, military bases, blah blah. I imagine that if there were a tourist density map of the United States, concentrating exclusively on those areas visited by non-Americans, I imagine that New York would be the lion’s share of the tourism in the U.S., followed by Hawai’i, bits of Florida, Las Vegas and Reno, the U.S. National Parks, and various spots along the Canadian and Mexican borders. Probably few European tourists would visit Eye Socket, Montana, to look at the polluted remnants of a copper mine, or Butthole, Arkansas, to see the nuclear power plant reservoir.
The reason I posted the km²/tourist ratio was because I saw Bermuda listed on the “least visited in North America” list, and it seems deceptive there. It only gets 272,000 visitors, but Bermuda is a well-known vacation spot and a tiny postage stamp of a place. Tourism is (Wikipedia says) Bermuda’s second-most important industry. 272K may look like a small number of tourists compared to the number that visit Spain, but it’s 4 times the actual population of the island.