TORONTO — Just about half of all international trips are to European destinations, while destinations in the Asia-Pacific region are taking a greater share of travel.

The stats are part of a new study ‘Sizing the Worldwide Travel Economy’ conducted by Oxford Economics and commissioned by TripAdvisor.

Tourism growth has outpaced global GDP growth and international travel is expected to become more important as household wealth continues to rise in large emerging markets, with a greater proportion of households able to afford international travel, according to the study.

The travel industry reached more than US$5.29 trillion in spending in 2017, with international tourism spend growing for the last eight consecutive years.

Not surprisingly, given the study’s partner, there was also plenty of data about travel advice site TripAdvisor. The study suggests that globally TripAdvisor influenced more than 433 million trips last year.