This Map Shows Where Tourists Outnumber Residents

If you live near a vacation hot spot, you’re justified in a little grumbling when tourists jam the roads, restaurants, and everything else. Residents of Vatican City are entitled to a lot of grumbling: According to a study by safari specialists Go2Africa, annual visitors to Vatican City outnumber locals by a higher ratio than any other place on Earth.

Read on to see what other global destinations made the top 10, plus maps highlighting tourist-to-resident ratios in the U.S. and abroad.

1. How the Tourist vs. Resident Data Was Calculated
2. 10 Places With the Highest Tourist-to-Resident Ratios
3. Map: Where Tourists Outnumber Residents By Country
4. Tourist-to-Resident Ratios for All U.S. States, Mapped
5. Each State’s Tourist-to-Resident Ratio, Ranked From Highest to Lowest

How the Tourist vs. Resident Data Was Calculated

Researchers determined the ratios by dividing the annual tourist population by the annual residential population. There’s a huge caveat to this methodology: The data points aren’t directly comparable, because a location’s tourist turnover is much higher than that of its residential population.

Imagine two apartments in Malta: One houses two permanent residents, and the other is a two-person vacation rental. The two permanent residents are only counted once for the whole year, but the tourist tally increases every time the vacation rental hosts new occupants. In any given week, then, the ratio of locals to tourists in those two apartments is even—two to two.

But let’s say the vacation rental hosts a total of 50 people over the course of a year. This study would register the ratio of locals to tourists as two to 50. That does not signify that there are 25 tourists on the streets of Malta for each permanent resident at any given moment. It basically just means that Malta’s locals see a lot of tourists in a year.

Those numbers are purely hypothetical, and the scenario oversimplifies tourism to one sphere: overnight stays. That said, you should keep the general message in mind when you’re looking at the actual numbers in the study. Don’t picture one lone local among a crowd of roughly 7710 tourists in Vatican City. Instead, picture that local standing in the same spot for a year while the tourist beside them gets replaced by a different tourist 7710 times.

The study’s ratios also imply that tourists and residents are mutually exclusive, which isn’t necessarily the case. U.S. states, for example, often include in-state excursions by residents in their tourism data. Let’s say you live in Columbus, Ohio, and take a day trip to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. There’s a good chance you’re represented in both halves of the ratio for Ohio, which is 20.1 tourists to every one resident. To what extent are Ohioans themselves contributing to crowds at their attractions? We don’t know.

In short, the maps below are just a fun look at tourist activity across the globe rather than a nuanced comparison of tourists versus locals.

10 Places With the Highest Tourist-to-Resident Ratios

All that said, we’re not disputing that Vatican City, home of the Roman Catholic Church, does a roaring trade in tourism—especially considering its size and population. The tiny enclave within Rome, Italy, covers less than 0.2 square miles and has fewer than 900 permanent residents, the pope among them. Millions of people visit every year.

Second on the list is Andorra, the minuscule, mountainous nation between Spain and France. According to Go2Africa, its 2024 tourism total was 9.6 million, compared to a population of just under 82,000 permanent residents. The top 10 also includes Monaco, the Bahamas, and more. (The image below uses the word country loosely; Hong Kong is not typically considered a country.)

Map: Where Tourists Outnumber Residents By Country

The map below shows tourist-to-resident ratios for dozens of countries across the globe. How does your home country stack up against Vatican City?

Tourist-to-Resident Ratios for All U.S. States, Mapped

This map shows the tourist-to-resident ratios for all U.S. states. West Virginia came in first place: Its reported 75 million annual visitors and 1.77 million residents work out to a ratio of 42 tourists per local. North Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont all ranked high as well. Meanwhile, Texas has merely two tourists per local.

Each State’s Tourist-to-Resident Ratio, Ranked From Highest to Lowest

Check out the full study here.

Discover More Maps: