If Finland is on your travel bucket list, you're in luck – it was just named the safest country in the world by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017 is a biennial report that has been produced by WEF for the last 11 years. It takes into consideration "the set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable development of the travel and tourism sector, which in turn, contributes to the development and competitiveness of a country" across 136 countries.

The safety and security rankings were part of an overall 14-part ranking. Finland took out the top spot, followed by the UAE in second, and Iceland in third. In somewhat of a shock, popular destinations like the UK and USA didn't fare so well, coming in at 78 and 84 respectively.

Closer to home, New Zealand beat out Australia; NZ was number 13 and Australia was 22 on the list. The least safe country to visit was Colombia.

However, when it came to the overall rankings for travel, the results were a bit more predictable. Spain took out the top spot, followed by France, Germany, Japan and the UK. Out of the top five, the US was number six, followed by Australia at seven.

Some of the other aspects taken into consideration for the overall rankings are business environment, health and hygiene and prioritisation of travel and tourism.

The biggest mover and shaker was Japan – they bounced from nine in 2015 to five in 2017, with a performance increase of 6.18 percent. Azerbaijan was close behind, they moved up 13 spots to 71 – an increase of 5.98 percent.

Europe is the strongest competitor overall – it holds six of the 10 most competitive countries and attracted 620 million of the 1.2 billion international visitors from 2016. It is almost twice as large as the second biggest market, Asia-Pacific, but it is maturing the slowest so it may not hold the top spot for long.

The report also reflects on the number of outbound tourists from each region. Unsurprisingly, the wealthier regions have more outbound tourists than others. Of the 1.18 billion outbound tourists globally in 2015, 5.9 billion of them were from Europe.

The report anticipates that in 2030 the number of global outbound tourists will have increased by 53 percent – the biggest increases are predicted to come from Africa (157 percent increase) and the Middle East (125 percent increase) as these regions become more stable.