A new Deloitte-Google forecast projects Spain will overtake France in international arrivals within 14 years. The margin may be narrow, but the shift signals a significant change in Europe’s tourism hierarchy.
Global (Tourism Reporter) — For half a century, France’s position at the summit of global tourism has looked less like a ranking and more like a permanent fixture. Year after year, it has remained the world’s most visited country — and in 2025, France recorded a record 102 million international visitors. Yet a long-range forecast by Deloitte and Google suggests that the hierarchy could change within the next 14 years.
Their joint NextGen Travellers and Destinations study projects that Spain could overtake France by 2040, reaching approximately 110 million international arrivals annually, compared with 105 million for France.
The five-million-visitor difference is relatively small in a global tourism market projected to reach 2.4 billion trips by 2040. But the significance of the forecast lies less in the margin than in what sits behind it: a changing geography of travel demand, the rise of new source markets, the growing influence of technology and demographics, and a gradual redistribution of tourism growth beyond today’s dominant destinations.
Deloitte and Google project that Europe will still capture the largest share of global inbound growth through 2040, while the Asia-Pacific region will account for the largest volume of additional outbound travel. At the same time, the top five destinations are expected to command a smaller share of global arrivals, signalling a more fragmented and competitive tourism landscape.
France may still hold the crown today. But the race for 2040 has already begun.
A Forecast That No Longer Looks Far-Fetched
When the Deloitte-Google projection first emerged, Spain’s tourism trajectory made a 2040 overtaking of France appear comfortably distant — a plausible long-term scenario built on a 2023 base of roughly 84 million international visitors. Two years later, that horizon looks considerably less remote.
Spain welcomed a record 96.8 million international tourists in 2025, according to the country’s National Statistics Institute, up 3.2 per cent from 2024. International visitor spending reached €134.7 billion, an increase of 6.8 per cent year on year. The momentum has continued into 2026, with Spain recording 46.6 million international arrivals in the first half of the year, up 4.6 per cent, while tourism spending exceeded €63.8 billion.
If that trajectory holds, Spain could approach — or potentially cross — the symbolic 100-million-visitor threshold well before 2040.
That is what makes the Deloitte-Google forecast particularly interesting today. The question is no longer simply whether Spain could become the world’s most visited country by 2040. The more commercially relevant question is how quickly the gap between today’s tourism hierarchy and tomorrow’s is closing.
France remains ahead. But Spain is no longer chasing a distant target. It is already moving towards the numbers that underpin the forecast.
Reading the Numbers Behind the Ranking
The Deloitte-Google analysis draws on decades of international travel data stretching back to 1975, revealing a remarkable long-term pattern: global international arrivals have historically roughly doubled every 15 years. That trajectory carried the market to almost 1.5 billion international trips in 2019, before the pandemic brought global travel to an abrupt halt. The study expects that underlying growth trajectory to resume, taking international travel to approximately 2.4 billion trips annually by 2040 — almost two-thirds above the 2019 level.
But the more important story is not simply the size of the future market. It is where those additional travellers will go.
Europe is expected to remain the world’s leading destination region, capturing 38 per cent of the additional international arrivals generated between 2019 and 2040 — more than 362 million extra visitors. Asia-Pacific follows with more than 278 million incremental arrivals, reflecting the rapid expansion of international travel from the region’s growing middle class.
The report’s most revealing finding, however, may be the changing concentration of global tourism. In 2019, the world’s five most-visited countries accounted for approximately 30 per cent of international arrivals. By 2040, Deloitte and Google expect that share to fall to around 20 per cent.
The established leaders will not disappear. Spain, France, the United States and China are all expected to remain among the world’s most visited destinations. But the hierarchy beneath them is changing. Mexico is forecast to rise into fifth place, pushing Italy to sixth, while Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates are projected to enter the global top 15.
The wider geography is even more revealing. The Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Caribbean are collectively expected to account for around 45 per cent of international travellers by 2040.
Spain’s projected rise, therefore, is not an isolated changing of the guard. It is one expression of a much larger redistribution of global tourism.
As new middle classes across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa enter international travel in greater numbers, the destinations that dominated the past half-century will increasingly compete with a broader, more diverse group of tourism economies.
The 2040 tourism map is not simply going to be bigger. It is going to be more distributed.
Why Spain, and Why Now
The Deloitte-Google study does not set out a single reason for projecting Spain ahead of France. Instead, the forecast reflects several structural advantages that reinforce one another — geography, connectivity, product diversity and the country’s ability to attract visitors beyond the traditional summer peak.
Spain’s geography provides an unusually powerful foundation. Around 300 days of sunshine a year, extensive Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines, mountainous interior landscapes and two major island archipelagos give the country a remarkably broad tourism portfolio within a single national market. Decades of investment have built the infrastructure to support that demand, while the sector has increasingly moved beyond traditional mass tourism towards higher-value experiences.
Connectivity strengthens the advantage. Spain’s extensive network of low-cost and full-service airlines provides relatively easy access from across Europe and an expanding number of long-haul markets. Combined with favourable weather, that accessibility has helped Spain extend tourism beyond the traditional summer season — an increasingly important advantage as travellers adjust when and where they travel in response to changing climate conditions.
The country’s tourism geography is another strength. Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and Málaga are major urban destinations in their own right, while the Balearic and Canary Islands, northern coast, inland regions and growing rural and gastronomic tourism offer additional reasons to visit.
That polycentric structure matters. Spain has multiple destinations capable of absorbing international demand, allowing the country to distribute visitors geographically and seasonally rather than depending overwhelmingly on a single tourism hub.
The result is an industry that continues to expand despite already operating at extraordinary scale. A recent CaixaBank analysis found that Spain’s tourism sector is growing at almost twice the rate of the wider economy — suggesting that the country’s story is no longer simply about attracting more visitors.
It is about finding more reasons for them to come, more places for them to go, and more periods of the year in which to visit.
The Money Question: Arrivals Are Not the Whole Story
If the arrivals forecast tells only part of the story, the spending figures reveal another — and arguably more important — dimension of the competition.
Despite welcoming around five million fewer international visitors than France in 2025, Spain generated approximately €134.7 billion in international tourism receipts, compared with France’s €77.5 billion. The difference is partly explained by length of stay: visitors to Spain tend to remain longer, distributing their spending across more nights in hotels, restaurants, attractions and other tourism services.
That divergence exposes a significant tension within the Deloitte-Google forecast. Both countries are pursuing tourism growth, but increasingly not growth at any cost.
France has set a target of reaching €100 billion in international tourism receipts by 2030, alongside a broader effort to strengthen sustainable tourism. Spain, meanwhile, has increasingly embraced the idea of “calm growth” — seeking to distribute tourism more evenly across regions and seasons rather than simply adding more visitors to already crowded destinations.
That shift matters because it challenges the relevance of an arrivals-based ranking itself.
If destinations increasingly measure success through visitor spending, length of stay, regional distribution, seasonality and resident impact, then the country welcoming the most visitors may not necessarily be the country generating the most valuable tourism economy.
Spain already demonstrates the distinction. It ranks among the world’s leading tourism earners despite its position in the arrivals hierarchy, suggesting that its competitive advantage is no longer simply its ability to attract more people.
The more consequential question is what those visitors contribute to the economy — and how sustainably that value is generated.
The Overtourism Paradox
Any narrative of Spain’s rise that focuses solely on visitor numbers risks overlooking the pressure already building beneath the growth story. Anti-overtourism demonstrations have become a recurring feature of the tourism calendar in Barcelona, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, driven by concerns over housing affordability, short-term rentals, congestion, pressure on public services and water resources, and growing frustration that the economic benefits of tourism are not always shared by the communities carrying its costs.
The policy response has become increasingly interventionist. Spanish authorities have moved to remove tens of thousands of non-compliant properties from the national tourist and seasonal rental register. Barcelona plans to phase out roughly 10,000 tourist-apartment licences by 2028, while also pursuing measures to reduce pressure from cruise tourism. The Balearic Islands have tightened restrictions on party tourism and alcohol-related disruption, while Málaga has launched public campaigns encouraging visitors to respect residents and local norms.
These measures expose the central contradiction in the 2040 forecast. At the national level, another 10 or 15 million visitors could represent billions of euros in additional economic activity. At neighbourhood level, however, the same growth can mean higher rents, more crowded transport networks, greater pressure on historic centres and beaches, and increased competition for scarce resources such as water.
That makes Spain’s projected ascent more complicated than a simple race for the top of the arrivals table.
If Deloitte and Google’s forecast materialises, Spain will face a more difficult challenge than attracting more tourists. It will have to prove that becoming the world’s most visited country can coexist with the liveability, affordability and character that made the country attractive in the first place.
And that may ultimately be the more important test of Spain’s tourism leadership by 2040.
France Will Not Cede Its Position Easily
It would be premature to treat Spain’s projected ascent as a foregone conclusion. Long-range forecasts depend on a chain of assumptions about global economic growth, demographics, aviation capacity, climate patterns, geopolitical stability and the speed at which emerging middle classes translate rising incomes into international travel. Any of these variables could shift materially between now and 2040.
France also retains formidable structural advantages. Paris remains one of the world’s most recognised destination brands, but French tourism extends far beyond the capital. The Alps, Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, wine regions, culinary heritage and extensive rail network, alongside one of the world’s richest concentrations of cultural and UNESCO-listed sites, give France an exceptionally diversified tourism proposition.
French tourism policy is evolving accordingly. Authorities are seeking to spread demand beyond Paris and the country’s most heavily visited attractions through products including wine tourism, agritourism, memorial tourism and nature-based travel. The objective is increasingly not simply to defend France’s visitor leadership, but to make its tourism economy more geographically distributed and resilient.
Then there is the arithmetic.
France welcomed 102 million international visitors in 2025 and needs to reach approximately 105 million to match the Deloitte-Google projection for 2040. Spain recorded 96.8 million and would need to add roughly 13.2 million annual visitors to reach its projected 110 million.
Neither trajectory requires extraordinary growth.
That is precisely why the race remains open. Spain has momentum and a rapidly expanding tourism economy, but France has scale, brand strength and an enormous installed tourism infrastructure of its own.
The question is therefore not whether Spain can overtake France. It is whether Spain can sustain its momentum while France successfully adapts to defend a position it has held for half a century.
By 2040, the world’s most visited country may be decided less by today’s rankings than by which destination manages the next generation of tourism demand better.
What This Really Signals for the Industry
The most consequential finding in the Deloitte-Google forecast may not be whether Spain eventually takes the number-one position from France. It is what the changing rankings reveal about the structure of global tourism itself.
A market expanding from roughly 1.5 billion to 2.4 billion international trips annually, while the five leading destinations’ combined share falls from around 30 per cent to approximately 20 per cent, is not simply reshuffling its established leaders. It is becoming more geographically diverse and more competitive.
For destination management organisations, investors and tourism operators, the implications extend far beyond the Spain-France contest. Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates are emerging as increasingly significant competitors, while Mexico is projected to climb substantially up the global rankings. At the same time, established destinations will face growing competition for travellers whose choices are becoming more diverse.
That changes the competitive equation.
Brand recognition will remain valuable, but it will no longer be sufficient. Destinations will increasingly compete on connectivity, capacity management, seasonal distribution, product diversity and visitor experience — while confronting the social and environmental consequences of sustained growth.
Spain may become the world’s most visited country before 2040. Its current trajectory suggests that possibility is becoming increasingly credible.
But the more important question for Spain, France and every mature destination watching this race is not who can attract the most visitors.
It is who can manage them best.
Because an additional 10 million visitors are commercially valuable only if the destination has the housing, transport, water, infrastructure, workforce and community support to accommodate them without undermining the very qualities that attracted those visitors in the first place.
By 2040, the world’s most successful tourism destination may not simply be the one at the top of the arrivals table. It may be the one that proves high-volume tourism and a high quality of life can coexist.
Data Sources: Deloitte-Google NextGen Travellers and Destinations report, INE Spain, and the French Ministry of Economy. Note: 2040 projections are forecasts based on current industry models and may shift as global market dynamics evolve.
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