20 Destinations That Have Transformed the Most in 20 Years

Tourlane, the leading planning and booking service for expert-made dream vacations, has revealed 20 destinations to visit in 2020 that have transformed the most since the last millennium. The list, which includes cities from the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, shows how development and large infrastructure projects influence travel trends. Tourlane’s Travel Experts identified 20 cities around the world that experienced more than a 100% increase in arrivals since 2000.

Europe dominates overall, with half of the cities in the list hailing from the continent, although two of the top three cities are located in the Middle East:

The complete list of 20 cities is viewable here: https://www.tourlane.com/20-destinations-that-transformed/

“Travelers are becoming increasingly adventurous, and more are choosing to visit up-and-coming destinations in Asia and South America,” said Tourlane’s Head of Travel Product, Manuel Stegmann. “We are also excited to see an increasing number of Americans looking to explore emerging destinations in Europe, too, which are well worth visiting.”

Additional takeaways from the research:

  • Europe and Asia are the best-represented continents in the ranking; Europe has 10 cities and Asia has six.
  • Spain is the best-represented country, with three cities in the top 20 (Valencia, Seville, and Bilbao). China has two.
  • Shanghai is the most populous city in the list, with approximately 27 million citizens.
  • Reykjavik is the least populous city in the list, with approximately 123,000 citizens.
  • North America and Oceania have no cities in this year’s top 20.

Methodology:
We used data provided by the airports in the respective cities to calculate the increase in arrivals from the year 2000 to 2018. 2018 was chosen as not all airports had released their 2019 statistics at the time the research was conducted. In the case that the city has two airports (e.g. Berlin) or opened a second airport since 2000 (e.g. Seoul), we combined passenger statistics from both airports. For Manila and Budapest, we looked at the increase from 2001 to 2018; Porto 2004-2018; Mumbai 2003-2018; Kigali 2004-2016. This was due to data availability.