1. The focus for this year’s World Tourism Day is “Tourism and the digital transformation”.
2. Tourism has been the fastest growing sector of the UK economy in employment terms since 2010.
3. Britain is forecast to have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025.
4. The number of overseas visitors who came to the UK in 2017 was 39.2 million.
5. The earliest known use of the word tourism was in 1811. The word tourist has been in the language since at least 1780.
6. According to a poll, 69 per cent of British tourists admit to stealing items from their hotels.
7. The most popular items stolen by tourists are towels followed by batteries or light bulbs.
8. Mobile phone chargers and items of clothing are the things most often accidentally left behind in hotels by tourists.
9. The value of tourism to the global economy in 2016 was an amazing $8.27trillion (£6.28trillion).
10. “In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion; now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.” (Robert Runcie).