Embrace the wisdom
of crowds by adding the world’s most-visited tourist attractions to your bucket
list.
By Kate Appleton, Rich Beattie, Adrien Glover, Lyndsey Matthews, Joshua Pramis,
Ann Shields
From October 2011
Ever heard of
Everland or Lotte World? Most Americans have never planned a trip to these
South Korean theme parks, yet they rank among the world’s 50 most-visited
tourist attractions - beating out the Great Pyramids (4 million), the Taj Mahal
(3 million), and Stonehenge (1 million). And
there are more surprises. Where we choose to
spend our vacation time says a lot about what we value, and despite - or perhaps
because of - the lingering global economic crisis, we are traveling more than ever.
International tourist arrivals were up 6.6 percent in 2010, according to the
World Tourism Organization. China
ousted Spain as the third
most-visited country with 55.7 million foreign arrivals, while France and the U.S. held tight
to their first and second place rankings.
Like it or not,
theme parks are just as appealing in these countries as they are in South Korea.
Disneyland Paris drew the same number of visitors (10.5 million) as
Sacré-Coeur, and two of the world’s 10 most-visited tourist attractions are
Disney parks. America
also dominates our list. Some credit goes to the weak U.S. dollar, which drew
8.7 percent more foreign tourists in 2010 than the previous year - and likely
persuaded many Americans to explore within our vast borders. China and India are even
bigger than the U.S.,
but their lack of dependable visitor statistics and limited domestic tourism
markets help account for their few attractions on our list. Expect to see more
of them over time; already attendance at Beijing’s
Forbidden City has surged from 7 million
visitors in 2007 to 12.83 million visitors in 2010. So what is the
most-visited tourist attraction in the world? And can 39.2 million people be
wrong? Read on to see the results - and an explanation of our methods for
calculating it all.