World Destinations: The Most visited and Busiest Places in the World at all Times
By: The Hashtag Magazine
Tags: Travel, Statistics, Infographics, Interesting, Data

France followed by Spain, is still the most visited country in the World, but do you know what are the other most visited places in the World?

France, Spain, The United States, and China are the top visited countries in the World.

Hong Kong, Bangkok, and London are among the top cities on Earth that people visit most frequently.

Are you curious to find out which are the top destinations around the Globe, where people usually choose to go for a trip or vacation?

If you would like to know a little bit more, here you will find out some interesting facts and statistics about the most preferred spots and loved destinations on Earth.

Today we will find out together which are the most visited continents, countries, and cities in the World. In addition, we will also see which are the most populated ones.

Let’s first have a look at this Infographic:

The Most visited and Busiest Places in the World [Infographic]

The most famous spots in the World

There are millions of interesting and famous places, and my favorite place on Earth is Home, but today we’ll go through the most famous spots in the World.

These destinations are among the best places to visit in the world for some reason. Otherwise why so many people would visit them?

On every continent, there are many spots that can be classified as ” best places to visit”, but now we’ll see which is the most visited continent on the Earth.

Can you guess?

Most visited continents of the Earth

Is the most populated continent in the World also the most visited one?

Not really.

Let’s have a look at the facts and see.

This chart shows the most visited places in the World by the number of tourists arrivals.

The most visited places in the World by the number of tourists arrivals [Source: Tourism Barometer]

Data is from the Tourism Barometer by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

As per this report, Europe is the most visited continent in the World, followed by Asia and the Pacific region.

North and South America are in third place by the number of tourists.

According to Worldatlas the most visited by travelers continents in the World are sharing the number of visitors as follows:

Europe 58% Asia 19.5% North America 16% South America 2.6% Africa 2.3% Oceania 1.6%

According to this data:

Europe is in the first place by the number of visits, with over half of the total number of visitors in the World.

Europe is followed by Asia, North Ameria, and South America.

Africa takes the fifth place, while Oceania is the least visited continent among these shown here.

Most populated continents on Earth

Are you curious which ones of the worlds’ seven continents — Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America are the “busiest” ones in terms of population?

See this chart created by using data from PRB.

The Statistics: figures about the population of all continents

As you can expect, the most populated continent in the World is Asia, followed by Africa.

The least populated region among the shown continents is Oceania. Antarctica is not shown on this chart, but if you are interested in details about its population, you can have a look at the numbers here.

In the future, Asia will remain the most populated continent for a long time.

This is how the population of all continents will look like by 2030.

Figures and projections on how the population of all continents will look like by 2030

The demographic figures about the population of the continents, normally change but compared with the previous chart, apart from demographic figures for each of the continents, there is no other difference.

This is why in the future Asia will be still the busiest place to live on Earth.

NB: For the projection, we used data from the UN Population Division.

Most visited countries on Earth

The top 10 most visited destinations by the number of international tourist arrivals include :

France with 82.7 million international tourist arrivals Spain with 75.3 million international tourist arrivals The United States with 76.9 million international tourist arrivals China with 60.7 million international tourist arrivals Italy with 58.3 million international tourist arrivals Mexico with 39.3 million international tourist arrivals The United Kingdom with 37.7 million international tourist arrivals Turkey with 37.6 million international tourist arrivals Germany with 37.5 million international tourist arrivals Thailand with 35.4 million international tourist arrivals

Statistics: The top 10 most visited destinations in the World

Most populated countries in the World

You just saw which are the most popular countries on Earth, but do you know which are the most crowded ones?

See the live statistics from the US Census Bureau.

By the time of publishing this post, the current status of the most populated countries looks like this:

China India The United States Indonesia Pakistan Brasil Nigeria Bangladesh Russia Mexico

Statistics: The most populous countries in the world

Most visited cities on Earth

After we saw which are the busiest places and the most visited regions and countries in the World, now it's time to find out what are the cities people visit most often.

Here our helpers are Euromonitor International and Mastercard Corporation which provide the figures to build the list of the most visited cities in the world.

The top 100 most visited cities are ranked by the number of international visitors.

Since the criteria for collecting data from both sources is slightly different, two separate lists are containing the most popular cities in the World.

As per the statistics collected by Euromonitor, the list of the10 most visited places in the world looks like this:

Hong Kong Bangkok London Singapore Macau Dubai Paris New York City Shenzhen Kuala Lumpur

As per the survey from Mastercard, the list of the ten most popular places on Earth looks like this:

Bangkok London Paris Dubai New York City Singapore Kuala Lumpur Istanbul Tokyo Seoul

In both lists, you can spot Bangkok, London, Singapore, Dubai, Paris, New York City, and Kuala Lumpur.

These are only seven of the most popular destinations.

How about the other most visited cities on Earth?

If we combine the above two lists and remove the duplicates, we will have the list of the 13 most famous cities and tourist destinations in the World, and they are:

Hong Kong, Bangkok, London, Singapore, Macau, Dubai, Paris, New York City, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul, Tokyo, and Seoul.

Most populated cities in the World

I bet you wonder where is the other interesting data, referring to popularity- which is the busiest city in terms of population.

No worries- we got it.

Many of the sources suggest different locations as the most populated cities in the World.

To be honest- it took us a while to get really accurate data for this one.

On the Internet, exist thousands of sources and unfortunately, even if the information they provide seems to be realistic, many of them are not precise.

The World’s list of the most populated cities looks like this [Source: World’s Cities Data booklet report ] :

1.Tokyo, Japan with 37,468 mln population in 2018 ;

2.Delhi, India with 28,514 mln ;

3.Shanghai, China with 25,582 mln ;

4.São Paulo, Brazil with 21,650 mln ;

5.Ciudad de México (Mexico City), Mexico with 21,581 mln ;

6.Al-Qahirah (Cairo), Egypt with 20,076 mln ;

7.Mumbai (Bombay), India with 19,980 mln ;

8.Beijing (Peking), China with 19,618 mln ;

9.Dhaka, Bangladesh with 19,578 mln ;

10.Kinki M.M.A. (Osaka), Japan with 19,281 mln ;

Cities with more than 10 million inhabitants are also known as “megacities”. Here is how the above list of the ten most popular cities or megacities in the World is expected to look like in 2030.

1. Delhi, India — expected 38,939 mln population in 2030;

2. Tokyo, Japan — expected 36,574 mln ;

3. Shanghai, China — expected 32,869 mln ;

4. Dhaka, Bangladesh — expected 28,076 mln ;

5. Al-Qahirah (Cairo), Egypt — expected 25,517 mln ;

6. Mumbai (Bombay), India — expected 24,572 mln ;

7. Beijing, China — expected 24,282 mln ;

8. Ciudad de México (Mexico City), Mexico — expected 24,111 mln ;

9. São Paulo, Brazil — expected 23,824 mln ;

10. Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo — expected 21,914 mln ;

Have you ever been to any of those popular places and cities?

See the below interesting interactive chart by Visual Capitalist for the most populated cities in the World.

The most populated megacities in the World

If you would like to learn even more about the World’s population, visit the website of the UN.

As a Final Point

Our virtual journey around the Globe is at its end and I really hope it was entertaining for you.

Paris, London, Bangkok, New York, Hong-Kong, and the other famous and amazing places around the world are waiting, so get the tickets, prepare your luggage, and let’s go.

Which ones are your favorites from these most visited world destinations and what are the spots you would like to visit soonest or during your next trip?