World tourist numbers hit 1 billion this week - UN

Tourism grew between 3.5 percent and 4 percent in 2012, the secretary general of the UNWTO said, with the billionth tourist expected to touch down somewhere in the world on Thursday.

Chinese tourists, whose numbers increased 30 percent year-on-year, and their Russian counterparts, whose numbers swelled 16 percent, offer big opportunities for traditional tourist destinations like the Mediterranean, but countries must do more to make travelling easier for them, the UN said.

"It is not acceptable any more to spend so much money on promoting some destinations and then spend even more money to tell people not to come," the UN's Taleb Rifai said in an interview with Reuters.

Rifai said Mediterranean countries must relax visa restrictions for visitors from nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China, where growth has outpaced recession-hit Europe and emerging middle classes are increasingly travelling outside national borders.

"We need to be specially tailoring and designing policies. A Chinese is not going to come to the Mediterranean just to visit one destination...These are the travellers of the future."

He also warned against tax hikes that could scare away tourists.

Many European countries have raised taxes as part of austerity programmes to get government finances back on track.

When Spain raised valued added tax (VAT) for the leisure sector to 10 percent from 8 percent this year, the industry estimated it could lose around

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