Which are the best countries to visit? What open data can and cannot show

What each lens measures, and what it does not

International arrivals describe popularity, not quality. UN Tourism counts overnight visitors from abroad, so a country with a large neighbour or a busy land border can score high without being a destination people dream of. The totals also depend on how each national statistics office counts. The UN Tourism World Tourism Barometer of January 2026 estimated 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals worldwide in 2025, about 4 % more than in 2024. Our country figures come from the UN Tourism series republished by Our World in Data, whose latest year differs by country.

The UNESCO World Heritage List records properties judged to have outstanding universal value. It counts places, not experiences, and it favours countries that have invested in nominations. A country with a long recorded history and an active heritage service will list more, whatever its scenery is like. We counted properties by state party in the UNESCO open-data table, which was updated on 8 October 2026 and holds 1,273 properties: 991 cultural, 240 natural and 42 mixed. A property shared between countries counts once for each.

Protected land is the World Bank indicator for terrestrial protected areas as a share of total land area, built on the World Database on Protected Areas. It shows how much land has a legal protection label. It does not show how easy parks are to visit, how well they are managed, or how much of the landscape is wild. Climate comes from the WMO World Weather Information Service, which republishes monthly normals from national met services. The Global Peace Index 2026, from the Institute for Economics & Peace, covers 163 countries and measures societal safety, conflict and militarisation at national level. We use it only as context. It is not a travel advisory, and a high or low position says little about the area you would visit.

Lens one: where international visitors go

The table gives two columns because no single year covers every country in the series. The 2019 column is the last year before the pandemic and has data for 13 of our 14 picks. The 2024 column shows more recent values where the dataset has them, and "not in series" means the dataset holds no 2024 value for that country, not that nobody visited.

Spain and Mexico stand out for volume, and Portugal's value rose from 17.3 million in 2019 to 29.0 million in 2024. Italy's was lower in 2024 (57.7 million) than in 2019 (64.5 million). Be careful with comparisons, since definitions and collection methods vary by country and the series is revised. For a different angle on where travellers look when money matters, see our page on cheapest countries to visit.

Lens two and three: World Heritage and protected land

Read the heritage columns together with the protected-land share. Italy, Spain, Japan and Mexico have many cultural properties. Iceland, New Zealand and Costa Rica have few properties, but several of them are natural. Costa Rica has 4 properties, 3 of them natural, and 26.6 % of its land protected in the World Bank series. Greece has 21 properties, 18 cultural and 3 mixed, and none classed as natural alone.

The Global Peace Index 2026 positions are included here as the third piece of context. Iceland is 1st and New Zealand 2nd, Portugal 7th and Japan 10th. Croatia is 23rd, Spain 27th, Italy 35th and Greece 53rd. Further down the table are Thailand at 101st, Peru at 107th, South Africa at 123rd and Mexico at 139th. The index describes national averages for violence and militarisation, and travel conditions within a country vary by region. For safety information about a specific place, use the official advisories described on our page on the safest countries.

Lens four: what the weather services record

Climate shapes a trip, and normals from national services are checkable. The table shows January and July highs and lows for a few stations in our selection, plus the annual rain total (the sum of the twelve monthly means). The stations are cities, so coasts, mountains and islands in the same country can differ a lot. WMO gives a period for most of these stations, as shown in the last column, and none for Dubrovnik or Lima.

The pattern is the usual one for the two hemispheres. Wellington and Cape Town are in the southern hemisphere, so January is their warm month and July their cool one. Lima, at the coast, is very dry, and San José records far more rain in July than in January. Rome and Athens have hot, dry Julys in these records, and Reykjavik stays cool all year. These are station facts, not recommendations. For month-by-month detail see our pages on Italy, Portugal and Spain.

Our selection: 14 countries and the criteria

This section is our own editorial choice, not a ranking, and it is not a claim that these are the best countries in the world. We required four things from each country: at least one World Heritage property, UN Tourism arrivals data for 2019 or 2024, a World Bank protected-land figure, and a position in the Global Peace Index 2026. Many countries meet those conditions, so we then aimed for regional spread and a mix of mostly cultural, mostly natural and mixed profiles.

The result is five countries in southern and south-eastern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Croatia), one in northern Europe (Iceland), three in Asia (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia), three in the Americas (Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica), one in Oceania (New Zealand) and one in Africa (South Africa). Africa and the Middle East are under-represented because we limited the list to 14 and needed lens coverage; omissions are not a judgement. Countries such as France, Türkiye, Morocco and Egypt are not among our 14. That is a result of the cap and the spread we chose, not a judgement about them.

Reading the European picks

Italy has more World Heritage properties than any other country in the UNESCO data we read, at 62, followed by China, France, Germany and Spain. That reflects history and nominations as much as any visitor appeal. Spain has the largest arrivals figure in our table and 50 properties, with four natural and two mixed. Greece combines 21 properties with 35.0 % protected land, and Croatia has 10 properties and the highest protected share among our European picks at 38.4 %. Portugal has 17 properties and, apart from Iceland, the highest Global Peace Index 2026 position among our European picks, at 7th.

Iceland reverses the pattern. It has only three properties, of which two are natural, yet it sits first in the Global Peace Index 2026 and has 20.9 % protected land. Reykjavik's July high of 13.3 C in the WMO table, against Rome's 30.3 C, shows how different these trips are in practice. If you want to compare how season shapes a trip, our guides to May and September show where those months suit different regions.

Reading the picks beyond Europe

Japan has 27 properties, 22 cultural and 5 natural, and 29.7 % protected land, and it sits 10th in the Global Peace Index 2026. Its 2024 arrivals value of 36.9 million is in the series, but the 2019 value is absent. Thailand's 2019 figure was 39.9 million, and its series has no 2024 value. Indonesia has 10 properties, 4 of them natural, but just 12.0 % protected land in the World Bank data. Island destinations get their own treatment on our page about the best islands to visit.

In the Americas, Mexico combines 36 properties with 45.0 million arrivals in 2024, and Peru has 13 properties including 2 mixed ones. Costa Rica has 4 properties and 26.6 % protected land. New Zealand has 3 properties (2 natural, 1 mixed) and 33.4 % protected land, and South Africa has 12 properties but only 9.6 % protected land. Positions in the Global Peace Index 2026 differ widely across these picks (Mexico 139th, New Zealand 2nd), so read your own government's travel advice for the regions you plan to visit.

Limits of this approach

Each lens has a bias. Arrivals reward proximity and low-cost flights. World Heritage counts reward administrative effort and historic density. Protected-land shares can be inflated by large marine-adjacent or remote reserves that few visitors reach, and a low share can sit alongside well-run national parks. Climate normals from a single city hide regional diversity, and Global Peace Index positions do not describe what a traveller meets in a specific resort or city. Nothing here covers cost, language, food, accessibility, health care or personal safety on a given route.

We also did not test entry rules, which depend on your passport and change over time. Always check the official immigration website of the country you plan to visit before booking. Treat the tables as a starting point for your own questions: which lens matters to you, and what other sources would answer it? The date on every figure above is the one given in its caption or note.

Planning note and longer stays

Once you have a short list, move from countries to seasons and regions. Our best-time pages for Iceland, Greece and Japan use station normals and dated sources, and the month pages for May and September show which regions suit each month.

If you plan to stay for several weeks in one place, an aparthotel or serviced apartment can be easier than a hotel room, because a kitchen and extra living space make routines, laundry and cooking simpler. Our guide on long-term serviced apartments covers what to compare. The table below, built from our own catalogue, shows how many aparthotel listings we hold in each of the countries discussed.