The ranking is surprising Switzerland's neighboring country has the most tourists per capita

"Tourists go home": Anti-tourist demonstrations are making headlines in Spain. However, other vacation destinations have the most tourists per capita. Switzerland is far behind.

Mallorca, Málaga, Marbella, Maspalomas - Spain is considered particularly popular with tourists. When it comes to overtourism, many also think of Barcelona, Seville and Ibiza. When it comes to other popular vacation destinations, cities such as Venice, Rome, Amsterdam, Athens, Prague, London or islands such as Crete, Bali and Phuket come to mind.

In Spain, there have been sensational protests against mass tourism in recent weeks. Many locals are outraged by higher housing costs, environmental pollution, traffic jams and general overcrowding due to the increasing number of visitors. Water shortages and the fact that the health sector and waste collection are overloaded are also annoying.

Austria has the most tourists per capita

However, among the most visited countries in the world, Spain does not have the most tourists per capita. Another country has the highest tourist rate.

If you divide the number of visitors by the number of inhabitants and thus determine the ratio of locals to holidaymakers, Austria climbs to first place in the list of the world's most popular tourist countries.

Figures from the World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism) show that France remains the most popular destination for foreign tourists in 2023 - with 100 million arrivals. This is probably mainly due to Paris, the city of love, which is on the to-do list of many people around the world.

Spain (85.2 million), the USA (66.5 million), Italy (57.2 million) and Turkey (55.2 million) follow in the top ten of the Madrid-based United Nations specialized agency (former name: UNWTO).

One tourist to one Swiss

Somewhat further behind are Germany with 34.8 million and Austria with almost 31 million. According to the figures, Switzerland has just 9.2 million.

However, Austria is catapulted into first place among the top countries if you divide its 30.9 million guests by its 9.2 million inhabitants. The rate is then 3.4 tourists per resident in the country of Sisi and skiing, Mozart, Sachertorte, pastries and Wiener Schnitzel.

Greece has 3.1 tourists (the United Arab Emirates has a similar figure). In Spain, there are 1.8 tourists per inhabitant, in France 1.5. In Switzerland and Italy, the ratio of tourists to inhabitants is practically 1:1.

"We Austrians can be more proud of our diversity and our attractiveness as a vacation destination," says ÖW spokeswoman Tanja Gruber in Vienna. People are often still practising false modesty, she says.

High tourist rates can also be seen in some countries with comparatively few inhabitants, such as Malta and Cyprus (and even more so in dwarf states such as Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein and the Vatican).

Croatia is also very conspicuous. UN Tourism puts the total number of visitors for 2023 at 16.9 million, which corresponds to 4.3 tourists per capita.

Cities most flooded with tourists

The vacation accommodation portal "Holidu" compared the number of arriving tourists with the number of residents. "The most overcrowded city in Europe" in 2023 was Dubrovnik (Croatia) with 27 tourists per capita.

It was followed by Rhodes (26), Venice (21), Heraklion (18) and Florence (14). Reykjavik and Amsterdam each had 12 tourists per capita, Lisbon and Porto 11 each, Dublin and Athens 9 each and Paris, Nice and Bruges 7 each.

When it comes to the number of overnight stays rather than the number of visitors, the ratio between locals and tourists in the South Aegean in Greece is particularly unbalanced in an EU comparison. Two years ago, the region with islands such as Santorini and Mykonos had an average of 110 overnight stays per inhabitant, according to Destatis.

SDA