UN Tourism cuts 2026 global arrivals growth forecast to 1-2%

The striking detail is the intra-year reversal: growth in the first quarter gave way to a decline in the second, meaning the downgrade reflects an already-realised deterioration rather than caution about the future. That matters for anyone whose demand model assumes travel volumes keep compounding, from airlines and hotel groups to the tourism-dependent economies that lean on arrivals for foreign exchange. The open question is whether the second-quarter contraction was a one-off or the start of a broader slowdown, since the forecast assumes some stabilisation without evidence in the data yet.