Countries by International tourism, expenditures (% of total imports)
Qatar ranks 1st in international tourism expenditures as a share of total imports, with outbound tourism spending equal to 19.48% of its import bill in 2020. At the other end, Sudan ranks 178th at just 0.16%, a gap of more than 119 percentage points. That spread reflects how unevenly tourism spending weighs on national import structures across economies of vastly different sizes and trade profiles.
Ranking 2020
Values shown in %.
Analysis
This metric measures international tourism expenditures as a percentage of total imports. The World Bank defines it as follows: 'International tourism expenditures are expenditures of international outbound visitors in other countries, including payments to foreign carriers for international transport. These expenditures may include those by residents traveling abroad as same-day visitors, except in cases where these are important enough to justify separate classification. For some countries they do not include expenditures.' The unit is percent, and a higher share indicates that outbound tourism spending makes up a larger portion of a country's total import bill. Data come from the World Bank World Development Indicators (indicator code ST.INT.XPND.MP.ZS). The 2020 dataset covers 178 countries. Of those, 84.8% have data from within the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official-quality. The dataset contains 28 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, and the range runs from 0.16% to 19.48%, a spread of over 12,000%.
The top of the ranking is dominated by Gulf states, small island economies, and a few sub-Saharan African nations. Qatar ranks 1st at 19.48%, followed by Aruba (2nd, 18.85%) and Marshall Islands (3rd, 17.97%). Guinea-Bissau (4th, 17.70%) and Guinea (5th, 17.03%) are notable for appearing among resource-dependent economies where import bases are relatively narrow, which can mechanically inflate tourism's share. Kuwait ranks 6th at 15.21%, and Bahrain appears at rank 24 with 10.26%. For small island territories such as Tuvalu (9th, 13.15%), Kiribati (10th, 12.59%), and Micronesia (11th, 12.54%), limited import diversification means outbound tourism spending commands a large percentage of the total import figure.
The middle of the ranking includes a mix of large and mid-sized economies at moderate levels. Germany ranks 38th at 6.94%, Canada 35th at 7.26%, and New Zealand 29th at 7.87%. The United States, despite being one of the world's largest sources of outbound tourists, ranks only 146th at 1.73%, because its enormous overall import volume dilutes the share. Similarly, Japan ranks 167th at 0.84%, Indonesia 156th at 1.24%, and China is absent from the published list entirely. Ireland ranks 176th at 0.45% and Tajikistan 177th at 0.35%, with Sudan at the bottom at 0.16%. Among notable anomalies, Andorra ranks 26th at 9.20%, reflecting a small import base rather than unusually high absolute outbound spending.
Several limitations apply to this metric. Because tourism expenditures are expressed as a share of total imports, countries with small or narrow import bases will naturally show elevated percentages regardless of the absolute scale of their outbound tourism. The source note explicitly states that for some countries, expenditures do not include all relevant spending, meaning cross-country comparisons may reflect reporting gaps rather than true differences. The 2020 data year coincides with a period of severe global travel disruption, which may cause values to be unrepresentative of typical patterns. With 28 extreme outliers flagged at the 3-sigma threshold and a range exceeding 12,000%, the distribution is highly skewed. Year-over-year volatility averages 19.7%, indicating that single-year values can shift substantially. Only 77.0% of countries have data from the latest reference year (2020), leaving 23% relying on earlier estimates.
Methodology
Data are from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code ST.INT.XPND.MP.ZS, for the reference year 2020. The metric is defined by the World Bank as: 'International tourism expenditures are expenditures of international outbound visitors in other countries, including payments to foreign carriers for international transport. These expenditures may include those by residents traveling abroad as same-day visitors, except in cases where these are important enough to justify separate classification. For some countries they do not include expenditures.' Values are expressed as a percentage of total imports. The dataset covers 178 countries, all with official-quality data (100%). Of the 178 countries, 84.8% have data from within the last seven years. The data year 2020 has coverage for 137 of 178 countries (77.0%), with remaining countries using the most recent available year. The distribution is highly skewed, with values ranging from 0.16% (Sudan, rank 178) to 19.48% (Qatar, rank 1), a spread of 12,241%. The viability check flagged 28 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold. Average year-over-year volatility is 19.7%, which is within the 50% acceptability threshold. No microstates under 1 million population were identified in the dataset.