01 — The five ladders, first sources only
Each row is one house, one instrument, one horizon. The figures are not interchangeable — the perimeters differ by construction, and the table keeps them apart.
| House · vintage | Horizon | Headline | Perimeter |
|---|---|---|---|
| WTTC × Oxford Economics Economic Impact Research, Apr 2025 | 2035 | $16.5tn GDP contribution (11.5% of global GDP) · 460M+ jobs · international visitor spending $2.9tn; 2025 prints a record $11.7tn / $2.1tn | Total travel & tourism contribution to GDP — direct + indirect + induced. The widest money perimeter of the five. |
| WEF × Kearney Travel & Tourism at a Turning Point, Jul 2025 | 2034 | $16tn GDP contribution (>11%) · ≈30 billion tourist trips, domestic + international · total travel spend $14tn | Insight report riding the WTTC projection for money; the trip count is its own estimate — both perimeters, labelled. |
| BCG Center for Customer Insight The $15 Trillion Opportunity in Leisure Travel, Jun 2025 | 2040 | Leisure travel spending triples: $5tn (2024) → $15tn; domestic ≈$12tn, regional >$2tn, international $1.4tn — fastest-growing, smallest share | Leisure spending only — no business travel, no GDP accounting. Survey ≈5,000 travellers in 11 countries + patterns across 68 markets. |
| Deloitte × Google NextGen Travellers and Destinations, 2024 | 2040 | International trips: 1.5bn (2019) → 2.4bn, +936M; top-5 source markets concentrate to 42% of departures (34% in 2019) | International trips only — the narrowest counter of the five; ≈20 predictive variables incl. multi-billion Google search queries. |
| Airbus Global Market Forecast 2026–2045, Oct 2026 | 2045 | Air traffic more than doubles to ≈10bn passengers/yr (+3.9%/yr); world fleet 23,310 → 45,550 aircraft; 42,060 new deliveries | All air passengers, domestic and international — the hardware view; middle class +1.4bn people by 2045 is its demand engine. |
02 — The trip counter: 2.4 billion, and who carries them
The Deloitte×Google model is the only ladder that counts people crossing borders rather than money. Its distribution table is the most actionable page in the whole long-view literature:
| Line | 2019 → 2040 | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| International trips | 1.5bn → 2.4bn (+936M) | Deloitte×Google NextGen; Africa & the Americas post the highest outbound CAGR (4–5%) |
| Incremental departures by origin | APAC +312M (33%) · Europe +282M (30%) | Asia supplies the plurality of new travellers; Europe keeps a third of the growth on a mature base |
| Top-5 source markets | 34% → 42% of departures | China, USA, Germany, UK, Russia — frequency rises, concentration rises |
| New entrants to the top-15 sources | Pakistan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Mexico | Middle-class arithmetic, in the study’s own words |
| Incremental arrivals by destination | Europe +362M (38%) · APAC +278M (30%) | Europe still receives the most growth in absolute terms |
| Top-5 destinations’ share | 30% → 20% | Spain, France, USA, China hold; Mexico rises to 5th, Italy slips to 6th; Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, UAE knock on the top-15 |
| Where travellers concentrate | 45% in four clusters | Mediterranean · Southeast Asia · Novel Middle East · Caribbean |
03 — The money: three perimeters, three answers
Ask three houses how big travel will be and you get $16.5tn, $15tn and $14tn — all correct, because each measures a different thing. The discipline table:
| Figure | What it counts | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| $16.5tn by 2035 — WTTC | Total T&T contribution to global GDP: direct, indirect and induced | Not spending. GDP accounting includes supply chains and investment. |
| $14tn by 2034 — WEF/Kearney | Total travel spend, domestic + international, all purposes | Not GDP. Lower than the WTTC line by construction — do not average them. |
| $15tn by 2040 — BCG | Leisure spending only; domestic ≈$12tn of it | Not the whole market: business travel is outside the perimeter entirely. |
A fourth number circulates commercially: DPI Research sizes China’s outbound market at $140bn (2024) → $386bn (2033), 13.5% CAGR — a paid market-research estimate, not an official series. Our own China dossier carries the CTD base case of $257.6bn for 2026 on a different, stated perimeter. Both are quoted, neither is blended.
04 — The source-market churn: India fivefold, China redrawn
The two ledgers this office files most closely are exactly the two the long view names as the growth engines:
| Market | Today (filed) | 2040 corridor |
|---|---|---|
| India | 32.7M departures in 2025, $35.0bn travel debit (Bureau of Immigration / UN Tourism — the dossier) | ≈145M departures in the Deloitte×Google model (≈5× the pre-pandemic base) · 80–90M in McKinsey’s own trajectory model (Nov 2023). Two houses, a wide corridor — both ends quoted. |
| China | 179.3M trips / $257.6bn projected for 2026 (CTD base case — the dossier) | Commercial sizing: $386bn by 2033 (DPI Research, labelled commercial); BCG has China on track for the world’s highest leisure spending at >10%/yr |
| Russia | $49.7bn travel imports, 13.4M tourist trips in 2025 (CBR / Border Service — the dossier) | Deloitte×Google keeps Russia inside the concentrating top-5 source markets to 2040 — the model predates and ignores sanction frictions; quoted, not endorsed |
05 — The hardware: 42,060 aircraft and seven million rooms
Growth on paper needs concrete and aluminium. Both hardware ledgers are fresh:
| Ledger | Requirement | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Aircraft | Fleet 23,310 → 45,550 by end-2045; 42,060 deliveries, half of them replacements | Airbus GMF 2026–2045 (22 Oct 2026) |
| Hotel rooms | ≈7 million additional rooms by 2034 at current tourist-to-room ratios | WEF/Kearney, Turning Point |
| Flights | ≈15 million more flights annually by 2034 | WEF/Kearney, same estimate |
| Cruise | ≈300,000 additional berths by 2034 | WEF/Kearney, same estimate |
06 — What the long view means for the TIO map
Every carrier of growth the five ladders name is already a filed or queued page on this desk. The map and the forecasts are the same document read from two ends:
07 — The honest caveat: 2011 promised 1.8 billion by 2030
UN Tourism’s Tourism Towards 2030 (2011) set a central scenario of 1.8 billion international arrivals by 2030, with 1.5 billion “in sight by 2023”. Reality: 2024 closed at ≈1.4 billion — the 2011 central path is running roughly a fifth above the actual line. Pandemic explains the shape, not the lesson: a long-range forecast is itself a perimeter — vintage, assumptions and all. That is why every row on this page carries its house, its year and its counting rule, and why this office will re-read this flagship when the ladders are next revised.
Sources — first only. WTTC Economic Impact Research, Apr 2025 (wttc.org) · World Economic Forum × Kearney, “Travel & Tourism at a Turning Point”, Jul 2025 (weforum.org) · BCG Center for Customer Insight, “Unpacking the $15 Trillion Opportunity in Leisure Travel”, 25 Jun 2025 (bcg.com) · Deloitte × Google, “NextGen Travellers and Destinations”, 2024 (deloitte.com) · Airbus Global Market Forecast 2026–2045, Oct 2026 (airbus.com) · McKinsey Travel, “From India to the world”, Nov 2023 · DPI Research China Outbound Tourism 2025–2033, Oct 2025 — commercial market sizing, labelled · UN Tourism, “Tourism Towards 2030”, 2011, used as the vintage-check. Filed-today figures are carried from the TIO country files and dossiers, each on its stated perimeter. Cells derived by us are marked *.