The World Economic Forum released on the 24^th of May 2022 “The Travel & Tourism Development Report 2021”, which in itself is an evolution of the “Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report”. The new revised index provides a detailed measurement on the Travel & Tourism (T&T) environment in 117 countries around the globe through its T&T Development Index (TTDI). The TTDI assesses “the set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable and resilient development of the Travel & Tourism (T&T) sector, which in turn, contributes to the development of a country”. In details, the TTCI is composed of five sub-indexes, namely the “enabling environment”, “T&T policy and enabling conditions”, “infrastructure”, “travel and tourism demand drivers” and “travel and tourism sustainability”, taking into account 17 different pillars and 112 individual indicators. According to the report, Japan topped the list of covered countries in the T&T development index with a score of 5.2, followed by the United States (score: 5.2), Spain (score: 5.2), France (score: 5.1) and Germany (score: 5.1). Furthermore, the Europe region (encompassing Europe and Eurasia), which hosted six nations among the top 10 positions, emerged once again as the region embracing the most T&T developed economies and the highest T&T regional average development level. The report also noted that the data used in the index was collected prior to the war in Ukraine and accordingly, Russia and Ukraine’s data was removed from the 2021 TTDI as data from these two economies “no longer reflects current or longer-term trends & conditions”.

On a regional basis, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) came in first among MENA countries in the 2021 TTDI, ranking 25^th in the world with a score of 4.5. The U.A.E. was followed by Saudi Arabia (global rank: 33; score: 4.3), Qatar (global rank: 43; score: 4.3), Egypt (global rank: 51; score: 4.2), and Bahrain (global rank: 57; score: 4.1), only to name a few. The table below summarizes 5 out of 17 pillars of the 2021 TTDI for MENA countries:

On the local front, Lebanon scored 3.4 in the 2021 TTDI, qualifying it as such to rank 10^th regionally and 94^th globally, losing 7 positions from the 2019 index score of 3.5. More particularly, and among the 17 pillars, Lebanon performed best in the prioritization of travel and tourism (global rank: 21; score: 4.7), safety & security (global rank: 98; score: 4.6), and health & hygiene (global rank: 72, score: 4.4) pillars. On the other hand, Lebanon’s weakest areas pivoted around natural resources (global rank: 111; score: 1.3), cultural resources (global rank: 80; score: 2.0), and travel & tourism demand drivers (global rank: 76; score: 2.1).