The Power Index

The 9 Countries Where Tourists Outnumber Residents by the Widest Margin

In 2024, 1.4 billion tourists crossed an international border. Some countries absorbed that traffic in stride. Others were swamped. Andorra, a ski town wedged between France and Spain, received 117 visitors for every person who lives there.

Source: National tourism boards, international organizations, Go2Africa study (July 2025). Total visitor arrivals in 2024 (and 2023 when unavailable) divided by resident population.

Andorra has 82,000 residents. In 2024, 4.16 million international tourists arrived. Including day visitors, the country received 117 visitors for every man, woman, and child who lives there. The country is 181 square miles — smaller than most national parks. It has no airport. Every single visitor arrives by road from France or Spain, funneled through two-lane mountain passes.

The world’s most visited country by total arrivals is France, with 102 million tourists. Andorra gets a fraction of that traffic in a country more than 1,000 times smaller by area. Tourism accounts for roughly 60% of Andorra’s GDP. The entire economy is built around people who don’t live there.

Beyond this chart, Macao illustrates the dynamic in extreme form. A city of 688,000, its draw is casinos. Macao’s gaming tables generated $28.3 billion in gross revenue last year. That is $41,000 in casino revenue per resident, from an industry that exists almost entirely to serve outsiders.

Small places dominate this list. Every entry except Bahrain and Hong Kong has fewer than a million residents. Small populations inflate the ratio by definition. But the pattern still reveals something real: these economies depend on outsiders. The Bahamas received 11.2 million visitors in 2024, a national record. Of those, 9.5 million arrived on cruise ships. Eighty-five percent of the traffic steps off a gangway, spends a few hours onshore, and leaves.

Anti-tourism protests swept Barcelona, Venice, and the Canary Islands in 2024 and 2025, but even Spain’s ratio (1.9 tourists per resident) is lower than every entry on this chart.

The comparison row is the real story. France and Spain, the world’s two most-visited countries by total arrivals, don’t even reach 2×. The global average is 0.17. Andorra is roughly 670 times that. Even Hong Kong, at the bottom of this chart, absorbs roughly 35 times the global average in tourists per resident.

7,710

Vatican City’s tourist-to-resident ratio. We excluded it from the chart. It has 882 residents and receives over 6 million visitors a year.

$28.3 billion

Macao’s gross gaming revenue in 2024. A city of 688,000 people generates more casino income than Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Singapore combined.

85%

Share of Bahamas visitors who arrived by cruise ship in 2024. Of the country’s 11.2 million visitors, 9.5 million came by sea.

60%

Andorra’s GDP that comes from tourism. The country’s $4 billion economy runs on ski passes, duty-free shopping, and hotel nights.

1.4 billion

International tourist trips worldwide in 2024, a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels. In 2025, that number rose to 1.52 billion.

UN Tourism reported 1.52 billion international arrivals in 2025, up 4% from 2024. The pressure on small destinations is growing. Andorra expects to approach 4.2 million international tourist arrivals in 2025. Anti-tourism sentiment is spreading across Southern Europe, with protests in Barcelona, Venice, Mallorca, and the Canary Islands now a fixture of summer politics. Whether that sentiment leads to visitor caps or tax levies will determine whether this list looks different a year from now. We’ll be watching.

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