Trade & Investment

Tourism & Visitor Economy

The capacity to import customers: destination development, access and visa machinery and the visitor economy that ranks among the largest export sectors on earth. One of the capabilities of Digital & Services Trade.

International families: 6,5392015 to 2024
Leading country: Japan1.2× the next
All families: 36khome filings included
Over five years: Falling2020 to 2024 against the five before

Year by year

Patent families by country of origin and the year of the earliest filing, 2000 to 2025; 2025 is a part year, still filling in. International families are those for which protection was sought beyond one country.

Volume

International patent families in the capability, by the year of the earliest filing.

Source: Global Institute for National Capability (GINC), 2026. Underlying patents from 107 patent offices, IFI CLAIMS and Google

Share by country

Each country's share of the year's international families, in per cent: the capability's five largest countries of origin, 2015 to 2024, and the rest of the world.

Source: Global Institute for National Capability (GINC), 2026. Underlying patents from 107 patent offices, IFI CLAIMS and Google

Country leaderboard

International patent families, 2015 to 2024, by country of origin. Growth compares the latest five full years with the five before.

Ten largest

Japan

United States

China

South Korea

Germany

France

Canada

India

Singapore

Taiwan

1,925

1,600

788

748

215

180

111


1	Japan	1,925	29.4%	1.1×	6,133
2	United States	1,600	24.5%	0.7×	3,959
3	China	788	12.1%	0.4×	16,886
4	South Korea	748	11.4%	1.6×	6,685
5	Germany	215	3.3%	0.9×	446
6	France	180	2.8%	0.6×	383
7	Canada	111	1.7%	1.4×	197
8	India	111	1.7%	0.9×	164
9	Singapore	99	1.5%	1.9×	110
10	Taiwan	88	1.3%	0.7×	347
11	United Kingdom	86	1.3%	0.7×	134
12	Australia	86	1.3%	0.5×	157
13	Italy	51	0.8%	1.8×	131
14	Türkiye	39	0.6%	2.3×	96
15	Switzerland	38	0.6%	0.4×	48
16	Israel	36	0.6%	0.7×	62
17	Netherlands	30	0.5%	0.8×	51
18	Sweden	27	0.4%	0.8×	37
19	Hong Kong	25	0.4%	0.3×	30
20	Cayman Islands	23	0.4%	0.0×	33
21	Finland	21	0.3%	2.0×	24
22	Spain	21	0.3%	0.3×	32
23	Ireland	19	0.3%	0.4×	31
24	Austria	15	0.2%	0.7×	22
25	Russia	14	0.2%	1.0×	24
26	Denmark	13	0.2%	2.3×	14
27	Brazil	13	0.2%	0.4×	36
28	South Africa	9	0.1%	2.0×	12
29	Malaysia	9	0.1%	3.5×	14
30	Saudi Arabia	8	0.1%	1.0×	9
31	Portugal	7	0.1%	6.0×	9
32	Poland	6	0.1%	0.5×	10
33	Belgium	4	0.1%	0.3×	10
34	Mexico	4	0.1%	0.0×	7
35	New Zealand	3	0.0%	0.5×	4
36	Luxembourg	3	0.0%	0.0×	5
37	Czechia	2	0.0%	–	2
38	Hungary	2	0.0%	1.0×	6
39	Norway	1	0.0%	–	5

Applicants

The largest applicants by international patent families, 2015 to 2024: across the world, then within each of the five countries with the most families in Tourism & Visitor Economy. Names are as held in the source and are not consolidated across subsidiaries.

Global

6,539 international families

TOYOTA MOTOR CORP · Japan

TOYOTA MOTOR CO LTD · Japan

HONDA MOTOR CO LTD · Japan

BEIJING DIDI INFINITY TECHNOLOGY & DEV CO LTD · China

NEC CORP · Japan

AMADEUS SAS · France

524

520

159

152

127

115

Japan

1,925 international families

TOYOTA MOTOR CORP

TOYOTA MOTOR CO LTD

HONDA MOTOR CO LTD

NEC CORP

PANASONIC IP MAN CO LTD

RECRUIT HOLDINGS CO LTD

523

519

159

125

United States

1,600 international families

FORD GLOBAL TECH LLC

MASTERCARD INTERNATIONAL INC

UBER TECHNOLOGIES INC

GM GLOBAL TECH OPERATIONS LLC

GOOGLE LLC

MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

China

788 international families

BEIJING DIDI INFINITY TECHNOLOGY & DEV CO LTD

BEIJING DIDI INFINITY TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT CO LTD

BEIJING DIDI INFINITY TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT CO LTD

CHENG QIANG

BEIJING DIDI INFINITY TECH & DEVELOPMENT CO LTD

JIN LEI

146

South Korea

748 international families

HYUNDAI MOTOR CO LTD

KIA CORP

KIA MOTORS CORP

LG ELECTRONICS INC

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD

COUPANG CORP

Germany

China

South Korea

Japan

Cayman Islands

6,452

2,381

1,618

1,604

589

Crosswalk

How Tourism & Visitor Economy is matched to the patent classifications. The entries below were chosen for it; each stands for itself and everything beneath it in the scheme, 13 Cooperative entries in all. A patent family counts when any of its codes, in either scheme and at any office, falls under one of them. Codes since retired are placed under the entries that replaced them.

Entry	Title in the scheme	Why it is chosen	CPC codes	IPC codes	Documents
G06Q10/02	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events	Reservation and ticket booking systems	11	2	77,073
G06Q50/12	Hotels or restaurants	Business systems for hotels and restaurants	1	1	27,950
G06Q50/14	Travel agencies	Business systems for travel agencies	1	1	13,455

CPC and IPC codes are the codes in use on patent documents, at any office, that fall under the entry. Documents is the larger of the two schemes' counts of documents carrying one of them. An entry with no IPC codes can be told apart only in the Cooperative scheme.

The Cooperative codes in use that count towards Tourism & Visitor Economy: 13 codes on 116,015 documents. The full crosswalk is in the cpc-to-capability.csv download.

Code	Title	Under entry	How placed	Documents
G06Q10/02	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	51,671
G06Q50/12	Hotels or restaurants	G06Q50/12	In the scheme	25,573
G06Q50/14	Travel agencies	G06Q50/14	In the scheme	13,369
G06Q10/025	Coordination of plural reservations, e.g. plural trip segments, transportation combined with accommodation	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	6,546
G06Q10/0283	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events for seating or spaces in a venue for travel seating	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	6,273
G06Q10/028	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events for seating or spaces in a venue	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	3,749
G06Q10/0285	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events for seating or spaces in a venue for lodging	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	2,029
G06Q10/021	Re-booking existing reservations	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	1,870
G06Q10/027	Changing the assignment of an existing reservation	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	1,599
G06Q10/0281	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events for seating or spaces in a venue for arena or stadium seating	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	1,325
G06Q10/0287	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events for seating or spaces in a venue for portions of office space	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	1,154
G06Q10/026	Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events for sport or leisure activities, e.g. booking tennis courts, athletic fields or a bike at a class or gymnasium	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	468
G06Q10/022	Reservation systems with overbooking processing	G06Q10/02	In the scheme	389

Match: Through its tools

The classification names the equipment or technology the capability draws on, not the capability. The count says how much is being invented for it, not how well it is done. Counts booking, hospitality and travel software; it also takes in domestic bookings and restaurants, and says nothing about arrivals or visa policy. The crosswalk is a first pass that nobody has reviewed.

Other capabilities in Digital & Services Trade

Services Trade Capability
Digital Trade & E-Commerce
Data Flows & Digital Trade Governance