Insider Monkey

35 Best Destinations in the World for Cultural Tourism

Ramish Cheema
9 min read

In This Article:

In this piece, we will take a look at the 35 best destinations in the world for cultural tourism. For more cities, head on over to 5 Best Destinations in the World for Cultural Tourism.

One sector that has been hit hard over the past couple of years is the tourism industry. The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic sapped global travel and forced populations all over the world into lockdowns. Estimates from the United Nations' World Tourism Organization (WTO) show that the virus almost decimated the global tourism industry. This is due to the fact that international travel shrank by 72% in 2020 leading to 1.1 billion fewer trips taken and setting back the industry three decades in terms of the number of travelers. The monetary impact of this disruption was perhaps as bad as it can get. Estimates from the UNWTO show that international tourist arrivals, export revenues from tourism, and tourism gross domestic product (TGDP) had stood at 1.5 billion visitors, $1.7 trillion, and $3.5 trillion in 2019, respectively. Then, as the virus spread and the industry collapsed, these metrics dropped to 406 million, $651 billion, and $1.7 trillion, respectively, in 2020.

However, by 2022 the situation had stabilized quite a bit. International tourism recovered to 65% of pre-pandemic levels, with the number of tourists sitting at 900 million and further expected to reach up to 95% of pre-pandemic levels in 2023. Regionally, Europe outpaced the broader market in terms of recovery as total arrivals stood at nearly 80% of 2019 and Western Europe recovered even faster at 87% and the Caribbean came in second place with the total number of visitors sitting at 84% of 2019 levels.

Even as the industry started to recover in 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave a second shock to the global economy last year. While the invasion did not stop global travel, it did cause historic inflation in nearly every country and ended up straining budgets that would otherwise have been reserved for luxury or recreational spending. Higher fuel prices reduced the distance that people would travel for their trips and preferred fewer international destinations as air fares surged. However, even though global air travel did not stop, countries closest to the conflict suffered the most. More data from the UNWTO reveals that flights to Moldova, Slovenia, Latvia, and Finland dropped by 69%, 42%, 38%, and 36%, respectively.

Building on this, several countries in the world have large portions of their GDP dependent on tourism. ReportLinker Research shares that Spain, Iceland, and the Philippines rely heavily on tourism as it accounted for 12.5%, 9.5%, and 9.3% of their GDP in 2020, respectively. Iceland was the fastest growing region with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.37% between 2015 and 2020. However, neither of these countries broke into the top five global destinations for cultural tourism. In fact, in 2021, Hungary ranked first in the number of global cultural attraction enterprises with 46,280 units, and the U.K. and Austria came in second and third places, respectively.

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