The World Economic Forum released their travel and tourism competitiveness report with a lot of usual statistics (everyone loves Spain ! the U.S. is better than Canada! Japan is awesome !) as well as one surprising one: Iran is the most price competitive tourism destination, in the world.

In real world speak, this means that Iran is a great place to travel for the budget-minded.

The report, which is published every two years, ranks 141 countries across 14 dimensions “revealing how well countries could deliver sustainable economic and societal benefits through their travel and tourism sector.”

Egypt was ranked second most affordable tourist destination in the world, followed by Indonesia and then Yemen. Other MENA countries high on the list include Tunisia (7) and Algeria (10).

Spain topped the main list, which ranked the most tourism friendly countries, followed by France and Germany. Sadly, no Middle Eastern countries made it into the top 10 tourism friendly destinations.

Which leads us to conclude, at least MENA is cheap?!