Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That may not be the case for many travelers. Aside from stupendous destinations like the Grand Canyon, some attractions are known for and visited because of what many consider as beautiful.
Money.co’s recently released Natural Beauty Report looked at “beauty” from country to country. It made the report as objective as possible, or at least used a number of reasonable yardsticks. Each of the seven factors used was based on its presence per 100,000 kilometers. (A kilometer is 0.62 miles.)
The factors included volcanos, mountains, coral reefs, protected areas, coastlines, rainforests and glaciers. Perhaps it is not reasonable that no human-made factors were included. The data were pulled from the Oregon State University’s Volcano Table, World Ultras Homepage, UNEP World Atlas of Coral Reefs, Protected Planet, City Population, Mongabay and GLIMS (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space). Only countries listed by the World Bank were part of the universe.
The maximum score available was 10. The report points out: “While many of the countries in the top 50 are smaller nations (often collections of islands), a number of larger tourist destinations make the grade too, including the United States, France, Australia, Norway and Thailand.”
The top spot was taken by Indonesia. Unfortunately, very few people go there, compared to most other countries. According to the World Economic Forum Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, it ranks 40th out of 140 countries, with 12.9 million international tourist arrivals. Spain tops that list with 81.9 million.
Here are the 20 countries ranked by their natural beauty:
- Indonesia (7.77)
- New Zealand (7.27)
- Colombia (7.16)
- Tanzania (6.98)
- Mexico (6.96)
- Kenya (6.70)
- India (6.54)
- France (6.51)
- Papua New Guinea (6.39)
- Comoros (6.22)
- Ecuador (6.09)
- United States (6.03)
- Vanuatu (6.02)
- Japan (6.00)
- Solomon Islands (5.97)
- Italy (5.87)
- Philippines (5.80)
- Peru (5.66)
- Australia (5.65)
- Costa Rica (5.65)
Click here to see the most popular countries on the CDC’s do not travel list.
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