The world's fastest growing countries in travel

The Souq Waqif, a maze of shops, restaurants and cafes, is among Doha's top tourist attractions.

The locus of travel has rapidly moved eastward, and 2013 and beyond continues that inexorable journey.

Both consumer and business travel trends are now being defined and tested out in regions other than the United States and Europe.

User experience and its intersection with design is the lens that travel will increasingly be defined by, and regions like Middle East, Asia and West Africa are at the forefront of those trends.

We talked about this at length in our report earlier this year: “13 Global Trends That Will Define Travel in 2013.”

Now data from World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) backs that up. In its annual “Economic Impact Research,” it has come up with the world’s fastest growing countries in travel and tourism, calibrating against GDP contribution, employment growth, business and leisure travel growth, investment and other metrics.