The United Nations World Tourism Organization put out a report recently showing that the Americas received 233 million tourists and the tourists spent approximately US$333 billion.

That's behind Asia and Europe, but about double Africa and the Middle East combined. The people and the dollars are always unevenly distributed though, on any continent, and it's no surprise that North America gets far more visitors and money than South America. The top 3 in visitors and earnings in the Americas were the USA, Mexico, and Canada.

After that, it's a long way down to number 4, with Argentina and Brazil both receiving 7 million tourists. Then it's Chile, Peru, and Colombia with 4-6 million each. (The others in the top-10 were the islands of Dominican Republic and Cuba.) 

What's really interesting though, is some countries are clearly doing a better job of attracting big spender visitors than others. Even though Chile is #7 overall, with 6 million visitors, most of those visitors seem to be their neighbors on a budget: Chile is nowhere to be found in the top-10 for earnings.

On the other hand, Costa Rica and Panama get fewer than 3 million visitors per year, but both made the top-10 in tourism receipts. Colombia is #10 in visitors, but #7 in earnings from tourism.

Some countries in Latin America are clearly doing a better job of appealing to high-net-worth visitors than others. Perhaps they realize it's not all about the top-line numbers, but what those visitors are actually spending per day while in the country.