Danes themselves might find their own country a less than appealing destination for foreign visitors, according to data from the World Economic Forum.
The statistics, reported by the Washington Post, asked respondents in 140 countries to rank their country’s attitude toward foreigners on a scale from one to seven, with one being ‘less welcoming’, and seven ‘more welcoming’. Denmark received a score of 5.7 and ranked 117th of all the nations surveyed.
The country also received the lowest score in western Europe and ranked significantly below other Scandinavian nations, which each ranked in the top 60 countries. Denmark did, however, score higher than the least welcoming regions of the world, including Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Asian nations such as China and South Korea. Russia, Venezuela and Bolivia scored as the least welcoming nations in the survey.
Iceland, New Zealand and Morocco made up the top three most welcoming nations for foreign visitors, respectively. Large parts of West Africa also scored particularly well, as did tourist havens such as Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.
The Washington Post's report did not find a unifying variable to explain the rankings, but suggested that a country’s degree of nationalism may contribute to its attitude toward international visitors.
“That would maybe help to explain the low ratings for China and South Korea (although there are other possible factors here, including race) and for Russia,” the Washington Post wrote.
“But there are reasons to think [the] theory might be wrong: it doesn’t explain why Denmark, a rich western European country, [scores so much lower] than its neighbours, for example,” the report went on.
The findings come after recent statistics, also from the World Economic Forum, showed that visitors also consider Denmark a less attractive tourist destination than in recent years.
