The charts below show the differences in income and annual number of tourists in four countries beginning from 2000 to 2014.
Overall, there was revenue and tourists’ number growth in all four countries: Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. Moreover, Thailand was the leader among all of them throughout the whole period.
Initially, Thailand and Singapore recorded higher numbers of tourist arrivals (9.6 and 7.7 million), respectively, whereas South Korea and Japan remained less visited with 5.3 and 4.8 million tourists. It is clearly seen that Thailand has been surpassing Singapore in number of visitors by less than 3 million, but since 2006 the difference increased and reached 9.5 million in 2014. The number of tourist arrivals in Japan and South Korea rose slightly with a small difference of half a million until 2009. In 2010, tourist arrivals in South Korea soared, and the gap with Japan was 1.2 million.
In 2000, Thailand and Singapore earnings both stood at $8 billion, which was higher than the revenues of Japan and South Korea. However, around 2003, Thailand began to outpace Singapore, whereas other countries conversely reached the same measures and continued to follow similar upward trend for 5 years. In 2014, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan have almost identical income and amounted approximately $16 billion, while Thailand reached the highest figure of revenue (just over $24 billion) among the four countries.