# OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026

**Publisher:** OECD Tourism  
**Published:** 2026-06-15  
**Category:** Global institutions & policy  
**Type:** Report  
**Access:** Free PDF  
**Official source:** https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2026/06/oecd-tourism-trends-and-policies-2026_13326fe2/3fd3cd75-en.pdf  
**Canonical:** https://tourismintel.ai/reports/oecd-tourism-trends-and-policies-2024-key-insights-and-policy-responses

## At a glance
- Tourism sector navigating multiple shocks including pandemic, natural disasters, geopolitical tensions; resilience tested by Middle East conflict and affordability pressures.
- Report spans 53 OECD and partner countries with dedicated chapters on social benefits, extreme weather adaptation, governance, and data-driven management strategies.
- Emphasis on flexible, co-ordinated whole-of-government approaches balancing economic, social and environmental outcomes while strengthening competitiveness and resilience.
- Publication covers topical chapters on tourism policies, governance reforms, and country-specific profiles; produced by OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities.
- Strategic shift toward localized experiences, enhanced workforce development, sustainable practices, and resilience-building measures across tourism destinations globally.

## What the report covers
The OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026 is a biennial benchmark supporting countries in driving sustainable and competitive tourism growth. It analyses tourism trends and policies across 53 OECD and partner countries, bringing together internationally comparable data and highlighting good practices. The report includes chapters on enhancing social benefits of tourism, adapting to extreme weather-related events, governance arrangements, and data-driven management approaches. It was produced by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities with EU co-financing.

## Key findings
The report characterizes the tourism sector as resilient but tested by contemporaneous shocks. Recent challenges include the pandemic, natural disasters, economic pressures and rising geopolitical tensions. The sector now stands at record levels in many OECD countries, though the Middle East conflict has disrupted global travel flows, increased transport costs, and shaped travel patterns around safety, disruption risks and affordability concerns.

Structural trends—technological, demographic and environmental—continue reshaping tourism development, management and experience. The report underscores the need for flexible, co-ordinated and whole-of-government approaches working with businesses and destinations to reflect tourism's strategic and cross-cutting nature and reinforce sector resilience through better anticipation and adaptation to uncertainty.

Governments and destinations are adopting more strategic approaches balancing economic, social and environmental outcomes while strengthening competitiveness and resilience. This includes renewed national tourism strategies, evolving governance arrangements, greater use of digital tools, and closer co-ordination across policy domains and levels of government. These themes run throughout the 2026 edition.

The report identifies multiple policy priorities: harnessing data for informed decision-making, deploying new technologies for tourism innovation, improving enabling environments for businesses, diversifying the tourism economy, promoting seamless transport, addressing environmental pressures, broadening participation in accessible tourism, and mobilizing financing and investment for development.

Chapters dedicated to social impacts and extreme weather preparedness reflect emerging policy focus areas. The report signals a shift toward understanding and fostering tourism's economic and social prosperity benefits, while simultaneously building sectoral capacity to adapt to increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events while maintaining competitiveness and resilience.

## Key numbers
| Metric | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| OECD and partner countries covered | 53 countries | Scope of analysis in 2026 edition; includes Part I OECD country profiles and Part II partner country profiles |
| Tourism publication cycle | Biennial | Reference publication produced by OECD Tourism as an international benchmark for sustainable and competitive tourism growth |

## Why it matters
**DMOs & destinations** — The report signals that strategic, data-driven management and governance co-ordination across policy levels are now essential. DMOs must adopt renewed national tourism strategies and closer cross-domain alignment. The emphasis on localized experiences, social benefits optimization, and extreme weather resilience offers targets for destination repositioning and investment prioritization in post-pandemic recovery.

**Hotels & hospitality** — The report stresses workforce development and social benefits as priority areas, reflecting evolving traveller preferences and policy expectations. Hospitality operators should prioritize workforce training programmes and sustainability practices. The focus on balanced tourism outcomes and accessibility broadening indicates growing regulatory and market pressures to align operations with environmental and social standards.

**Travel tech & distribution** — Governments are shifting toward data-driven tourism management and digital tool deployment, creating opportunities for technology providers. The emphasis on co-ordinated governance and real-time decision-making suggests demand for integrated platforms enabling data sharing across policy domains. Tech providers addressing accessibility, resilience monitoring and localized experience curation are well positioned.

## Methodology and limits
The 2026 edition brings together internationally comparable data on tourism from 53 OECD and partner countries using the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics 2008, Tourism Satellite Account Recommended Methodological Framework 2008, and Balance of Payments standards. Data sources include visitor and border surveys, resident travel surveys, accommodation provider data, and Tourism Satellite Accounts. The report synthesizes policy analysis, country profiles and statistical tables. This brief is based on the publicly available cover and prefatory material; full analytical chapters and country-specific data are contained in the complete report accessible via OECD Publishing.

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© OECD Tourism for the original report. This brief is an original editorial summary by TourismIntel (https://tourismintel.ai). Read the original: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2026/06/oecd-tourism-trends-and-policies-2026_13326fe2/3fd3cd75-en.pdf