Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes.The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people"traveling to and staying in places outside their usualenvironment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure,business and other purposes".[1]
Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. Afterslowly recovering from the contraction resulting from the late-2000s recession, where tourism suffered a strong slowdownfrom the second half of 2008 through the end of 2009, and theoutbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus,[2][3] international touristarrivals surpassed the milestone 1 billion tourists globally for firsttime in history in 2012.[4] International tourism receipts (the travelitem of the balance of payments) grew to US$1.03 trillion (€740billion) in 2011, corresponding to an increase in real terms of3.8% from 2010.[5] In 2012, China became the largest spender ininternational tourism globally with US$102 billion, surpassingGermany and United States. China and emerging marketssignificantly increase their spending over the past decade, withRussia and Brazil as noteworthy examples.