While international leisure and business travel have been sharply eroded by the COVID-19 pandemic, when it is safer to go to other countries, tourism to some nations will spike back to the tens of millions a year. There were nearly 90 million international visitors to France in 2018. Almost 80 million tourists visited the United States the same year. These visits are important to many economies. Tourism helps employ over 15 million American workers.
Some international travelers visit only one or two cities. Visitors to France may not venture beyond Paris, and visitors to New York City may not go anywhere else. Each city has so many attractions that it would take weeks to visit just those that are most well known.
Other travelers want to see more of the counties they visit. Online driver’s education site Zutobi looked at the best places for road trips across a large number of countries and picked the best countries.
The universe of the countries that were rated totaled 42. The highest possible score was 10. The ratings were determined by road congestion, travel safety, the cost to hire a car, fuel prices, parking prices and attractions. Data was pulled from TomTom’s 2020 Traffic Index, the World Health Organization’s Global Health Observatory, the World Bank, Kayak, GlobalPetrolPrices.com and Parkopedia’s Global Parking Index. Another measure was “interest in road trips,” which used numbers from Google and Instagram.
The United States topped the list with a score of 7.17. Italy and Spain followed, at 6.38 and 6.35, respectively.
The United States has among the lowest traffic congestion numbers and extremely high Instagram posts and Google searches.
These are the top 10 countries to drive as a tourist:
- United States (7.17)
- Italy (6.38)
- Spain (6.34)
- Portugal (6.20)
- Slovenia (6.13)
- United Kingdom (5.89)
- Switzerland (5.89)
- France (5.79)
- Turkey (5.78)
- Denmark (5.78)
Click here to see which are the most beautiful places in the United States to visit.
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