The big idea: Tourism is travel away from home for leisure, recreation or business, staying at least one night. International tourism has grown enormously — from around 25 million trips in 1950 to well over a billion international arrivals a year today.
This micro is about the growth and trends of tourism: how fast it has grown, where tourists go, and why the numbers keep changing over time. Reading these trends off a table or graph is the core Paper 1 skill here.
Key terms for tourism trends
- International arrivals — the number of visitors crossing a border into a country each year.
- Tourist hotspot — a destination that attracts very large visitor numbers (a city, resort or honeypot site).
- Range — the highest value minus the lowest value in a data set (a measure of spread).
- Median — the middle value when the data is put in order (a measure of average less affected by extremes).
- Trend — the general direction a value moves over time (rising, falling, fluctuating).
- Carrying capacity — the most visitors a place can take before the experience or environment is damaged.
Growth is uneven: Tourism has grown fast overall, but unevenly. A few hotspots take a huge share of visitors while many places get few — so a ranked table has a wide range.
Numbers also rise and fall sharply year to year when something changes (a new air route, a viral video, an economic shock).
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How this is tested: A ranked bar chart (or table) of international visitors to different hotspots is the figure you read here. State the range (highest minus lowest bar) and the median (the middle bar once they are ranked) — short [1]-mark reads that test whether you can pull a value straight off a chart. Always show the figures and quote the units (millions).
Read the scale first. The tallest minus the shortest bar is the range; the middle bar of the ranked nine is the median.
Interactive diagram
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Using the bar chart of international visitors above, state the range of visitor numbers.
Model answer plan
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| Rank | Destination | Visitors (millions) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bangkok, Thailand | 22.8 |
| 2 | Paris, France | 19.1 |
| 3 | Dubai, UAE | 16.7 |
| 4 | Singapore | 14.7 |
| 5 | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | 13.8 |
| 6 | Istanbul, Turkey | 13.4 |
| 7 | Rome, Italy | 10.3 |
| 8 | Barcelona, Spain | 9.1 |
| 9 | Vienna, Austria | 6.4 |
Range and median, fast: Range = highest minus lowest. Find the top and bottom rows and subtract.
Median = the middle value. If the list is already ranked, just count to the middle row. With 9 destinations the median is the 5th value; with an even count, average the two middle values.
Using the table of international visitors above: (a) state the range of visitor numbers; (b) state the median number of visitors.
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A line graph of arrivals shows how a destination's visitor numbers move over time. You read a value off the line, subtract to find a rise or fall, and spot the steepest segment — the period when numbers grew the fastest. Treat the table below as the two lines of that graph.
| Year | From country A | From country B |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 1.5 | 1.0 |
| 2014 | 1.8 | 1.1 |
| 2015 | 3.0 | 1.2 |
| 2016 | 4.7 | 1.4 |
| 2017 | 6.2 | 1.6 |
| 2018 | 8.0 | 2.0 |
| 2019 | 9.1 | 3.0 |
What drives tourism growth and trends
- Cheaper air travel — budget airlines and more routes put more places within reach.
- Rising incomes — a growing global middle class (e.g. in China and India) can now afford to travel.
- More leisure time — paid holidays and shorter working weeks free people up to travel.
- Technology — online booking, reviews and social media make planning and choosing a destination easy.
- Shocks can reverse it — recessions, conflict, disease outbreaks and travel bans cut arrivals sharply.
| Step in the chain | Effect on visitor numbers |
|---|---|
| A place goes viral / influencers post it | Millions see the destination they had never heard of |
| Reviews and photos build the image | It looks attractive and 'must-see', so demand rises |
| Easy online booking | People act on the impulse and book a trip quickly |
| Numbers climb steeply | Arrivals can surge in just a year or two (a viral spike) |
| Possible backlash | Crowding or bad press can later push numbers down again |
Explain how social media can change the number of visitors to a destination over time.
Model answer plan
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Read the line, then the slope: For a rise: read the value at the later year minus the value at the earlier year. For the fastest growth: find the steepest segment — the biggest jump between two years (here, country A rises most steeply from 2014 to 2015).
Dubai — built for tourism growth: Dubai grew from a small Gulf port into a tourism hotspot drawing well over 15 million international visitors a year.
Drivers: a global airline hub (Emirates), tax-free shopping, headline attractions (the Burj Khalifa), and heavy marketing — a textbook case of deliberately engineered tourism growth.
Venice and the Lake District — when growth bites back: Venice receives tens of millions of visitors a year for a tiny historic city, straining its lagoon and pushing out residents — it now charges day-trippers an entry fee.
The Lake District (UK) draws huge numbers of walkers; honeypot villages face congestion and erosion. Both show tourism growth hitting carrying capacity.
London 2012 — events drive a spike: The London 2012 Olympic Games lifted visitor numbers and global profile, and left regenerated venues that keep attracting visitors.
Mega-events are a classic way numbers jump in a single year — a clear trend in the data.
How this is tested — Suggest / Explain factors: Beyond the data reads, Paper 1 Option E asks you to Suggest or Explain why visitor numbers to a place have grown or changed. Name factors (cheaper flights, rising incomes, social media, events) and develop each into a clear chain to a change in numbers — anchor it to a real destination where you can.
Visitor numbers to a coastal destination rose sharply over a decade. Suggest two factors that could explain this growth.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Factor + chain + place: Don't just list factors — develop each into a chain to more visitors, and where you can, anchor it to a named destination (Dubai's airline hub, a viral beach). That lifts the mark.