Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. After slowly recovering from the contraction resulting from the late-2000s recession, where tourism suffered a strong slowdown from the second half of 2008 through the end of 2009, and the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus,[2][3] international tourist arrivals surpassed the milestone 1 billion tourists globally for first time in history in 2012.[4] International tourism receipts (the travel item of the balance of payments) grew to US$1.03 trillion in 2011, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 3.8% from 2010.