The United Nations World Tourism Organization recently released their statistics for international arrivals in 2012. It was a good year for tourism although many smaller destinations continue to struggle… as do many places which are racked by war and violence (not a real surprise). But since many in our community are truly intrepid travelers we thought it’d interesting to highlight some of the least travelled to destinations around the world.
Topping the list, err bottoming out the list depending upon how you look at it, is the South Pacific nation of Nauru with just 200 international arrivals last year. This is reportedly the smallest nation in the world with only around 9400 inhabitants. It used to be called Pleasant Island and we can’t help but think changing its name back may help tourism.
Somalia apparently only had 500 people visit in 2012. Years of civil war, unspeakable poverty, a serious issue with piracy (as in the swashbuckling kind not the illegal downloading type) and significant problems with crime and violence make Somalia particularly unattractive. Unlike some of their neighbors such as Kenya or Ethiopia, this East African nation hasn’t been able to become stable enough to attract foreign visitors. And that’s a shame as the pictures (not necessarily the news reports of kidnappings and assassinations) make this former Italian colony look quite interesting.
Tuvalu the South Pacific nation famous for the .TV url comes in as the third least visited country with just 1,200 tourists last year. If you’re interested in seeing this tiny nation you should go soon as rising waters from global warming are expected to eventually flood the country and unlike Venice, there are no plans or resources to stop the growing tides.
Other interesting countries on the list include Equatorial Guinea which welcomed only 6,000 visitors last year. This African nation has a branding problem with too many other countries having “Guinea” in their name, including of course, Guinea. But lets not forget Papua New Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.
One notable exception to the countries on the least visited list is the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan. They purposely keep their tourism to a planned and manageable number. In 2012 they only granted 37,000 visas to international tourists. This spiritual and magical kingdom always tops the world in happiness, in fact in 1972 the King coined the phrase Gross National Happiness to create an index to measure quality of life rather than focusing on GDP as a measure of financial wealth. His thinking was that social progress is more important than financial growth.
Tourism is a double-edged sword for developing nations. On one hand it provides much needed hard currency, helps to improve living conditions, creates jobs and grows infrastructure and lets countries interact with a global population. On the other hand it can pollute natural resources, take away food and other necessities from poorer villages and overwhelm indigenous culture. And of course in most emerging destinations, the benefits of tourism are rarely evenly distributed. But we still believe tourism is a force for good in the world and we would gladly get on a plane and visit any of these destinations. It’s a beautiful world and we want to see as much of it as possible.
