World tourism arrivals reaches 940 million, according to UN Tourism. The majority, or 51 percent, of the international tourists were motivated to travel for leisure, recreation, and vacations. Another 27 percent were driven to visit family and friends (VFR) or to make religious pilgrimages to places such as Mecca, Jerusalem, and the Vatican. Business travelers rounded out the group of inbound tourists with a showing of 15 percent.
It is striking that holiday tourism more than doubled business travel and VFR combined. In addition to the statistics related to purpose of tourism, the overall numbers showed a recovery for international tourism from the past couple of years, along with the continued increase of air transport versus ground travel.
(Statistics collected in 2010)
Minor updates and edits were made from the original article.
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Gennaro Salamone is the founder and editor of Enduring Wanderlust. Please contact him with questions regarding article or photo submissions.