By UN Tourism's arrival figures, the least-visited countries in the world are mostly small Pacific island nations: Tuvalu recorded 3,600 international arrivals in 2019, the Marshall Islands 6,100, Kiribati 12,000 and the Federated States of Micronesia 18,000. Reaching them is mostly a matter of time and flights rather than hardship, so plan around infrequent connections, build in spare days, and check your own government's travel advice before you book.
The least-visited countries, by the numbers
These are some of the UN member states with the fewest recorded international arrivals, from UN Tourism data published by the World Bank. Most figures are for 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
| Country | Region | Arrivals | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuvalu | Pacific | 3,600 | 2019 |
| Marshall Islands | Pacific | 6,100 | 2019 |
| Kiribati | Pacific | 12,000 | 2019 |
| Federated States of Micronesia | Pacific | 18,000 | 2019 |
| Solomon Islands | Pacific | 28,900 | 2019 |
| São Tomé and Príncipe | Africa | 33,400 | 2018 |
| Comoros | Africa | 45,100 | 2019 |
| Guinea-Bissau | Africa | 52,400 | 2019 |
| Sierra Leone | Africa | 71,000 | 2019 |
| East Timor | Asia | 74,800 | 2019 |
| Palau | Pacific | 94,000 | 2019 |
| Tonga | Pacific | 94,000 | 2019 |
| Liechtenstein | Europe | 98,100 | 2019 |
The full ranking is on the least-visited countries page. It also includes countries where many governments currently advise against all travel. This guide leaves those out, and so should your plans until that advice changes.
A few countries have no figure in this series at all. Of the 193 UN members, 182 have one; Nauru is one of the eleven without.
Read the numbers with care
The figures are a rough ranking, not a census. The World Bank's own notes say countries collect them differently: some count border arrivals, some count only guests in hotels, some only arrivals by air. They also count arrivals, not people, so one traveler who comes twice counts twice.
Liechtenstein shows why that matters. It has no airport and borders only Switzerland and Austria, so visitors arrive by road or rail from its neighbors. Where a country counts only guests who stay the night, day visitors don't show up at all, and a place many people see on a day trip can look rarer in the figures than it feels on the ground. More on reaching countries like it in the countries without an airport.
Why so few people go
- Distance and few flights. The Pacific nations on the list are far from everywhere, and served by a handful of routes that often don't run every day.
- Size. Tuvalu has about 23 km² (9 square miles) of land in all, spread over low coral atolls. There's little room for big hotels or crowds.
- Time. With few flights, you may need a night or two in a hub each way, which makes a short visit a long trip.
- Little promotion. You rarely see these places advertised, so few people think of them.
None of that makes them bad places to visit. It means you need more time and more planning.
How to plan a trip
- Start from the flights, not the hotel. Find how the country is reached and how often. Most of the Pacific countries on the list connect through a regional hub, and the schedule decides the length of your stay.
- Leave spare days. On a route with a few flights a week, one cancellation can strand you for days. Don't book a tight onward connection, and don't fly home the same day you leave the island.
- Check entry rules on official sites. Visa and entry requirements change. Use the country's government or embassy site, not a forum post from years ago.
- See a travel clinic a couple of months before you go, for vaccinations and medicines suited to where you're heading.
- Get insurance that covers medical evacuation. On a small island, serious treatment may mean a flight to another country.
- Bring a mix of payment. Cards may not work everywhere, and ATMs can be few. Carry some cash in a currency that's easy to exchange there.
- Check your own government's travel advice, for example from the US State Department, the UK's FCDO, Canada or Australia's Smartraveller, and register your trip if they offer it.
Combine where you can: once you've made it to a hub, a second rare country nearby can cost far less time than a separate trip.
Make sure the visit counts
After all that effort, make sure the record shows it. If you only change planes in a country, most counting rules call it a layover, not a visit; see does a layover count. Take at least one photo on the ground, with location on, outside the airport. Some rare places are also counted differently by different lists, which 193, 195, 250 or 330 explains, and the Travelers' Century Club list splits some countries into several entries.
Globestamp gives every country a stamp drawn after its real entry stamp, and the fewer international visitors a country receives in UN Tourism figures, the rarer its stamp's finish, up to Mythic. You can see them all on the stamps page.