The World’s Most Peaceful Countries Have Been Revealed — and the U.S. Is Near the Bottom
The World’s Most Peaceful Countries Have Been Revealed — and the U.S. Is Near the Bottom
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https://www.fodors.com/news/news/the-worlds-most-peaceful-countries-have-been-revealed-and-the-u-s-is-near-the-bottom
The Global Peace Index has ranked the world’s most peaceful countries for 2026. See which nations made the top 10, where the U.S. landed, and why global peace is at its lowest level in nearly two decades.
The Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) releases its Global Peace Index each year, ranking the globe’s most peaceful countries using a group of 23 indicators. The lowest-scoring countries are ranked at the top of the list, and this year Iceland takes the top spot as the globe’s most peaceful nation—a position it has held for the last 19 consecutive years.
The metrics include items such as perceptions of criminality, police rate, homicide rate, incarceration rate, access to small arms, violent demonstrations, violent crime, political instability, number of deaths from conflict, weapons stockpiles, and overall safety and security, among others.
The 2026 report also found that global peace was at its lowest level since the index was introduced in 2007, and the conditions that precede conflict were the worst since the Second World War. Ninety-nine countries on the list experienced deterioration in peacefulness in the past year, another high for the index. The number of active, state-based conflicts reached 61.
Rounding out the top ten on the list after Iceland were New Zealand, Switzerland, Slovenia, Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Singapore, Finland, and Japan.
The least peaceful countries on the index included Russia (ranked last), followed by Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Israel, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Mali.
In North America, Canada (14th overall) and Costa Rica (62nd) were named the most peaceful, while the United States (134th) and Mexico (139th) were similarly ranked. Only Haiti (142nd) ranked lower, meaning the U.S. was the third least peaceful country in North America. The IEP noted that the U.S. dropped four percentage points in 2026, pushing it to its lowest ranking since the index was created.
Mexico’s results were also broken out by state, with Yucatán, Chiapas, Tlaxcala, Durango, and Campeche topping the list. Colima, Sinaloa, and Guanajuato ranked the least peaceful.
The most peaceful countries in South America included Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. In Africa, Namibia, Madagascar, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, and Morocco were ranked the most peaceful. Central Asia was also a bright spot for peace, with Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Mongolia all ranking in the upper tiers.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Vietnam, Laos, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Bhutan, Malaysia, Timor-Leste, and Australia rounded out the most peaceful countries, including top-ranked New Zealand.
The IEP ranks 163 states and territories on its list, encompassing some 99.7% of the global population. The index omits many smaller states without or with limited armed forces, including Monaco, San Remo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Andorra, Cabo Verde, The Seychelles, The Maldives, and Vatican City. Many sovereign island nations in Oceania and the Caribbean are also omitted from the index.
The IEP noted that Europe was the most peaceful region on the index, with seven of the ten most peaceful countries represented, but also noted that scores on the continent dropped because its long-term trend of demilitarization has dropped significantly since 2022.
IEP is a global think tank headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with branch offices in New York, The Hague, Harare, and Mexico City. It’s worth noting that the IEP reviews countries based on overall participation and potential for armed conflict, not threats or concerns specific to travelers. For travel-specific concerns, travelers should still consult the advice of consular offices in their home country before traveling or living internationally.
The full index and an interactive map on the Global Peace Index and other indices produced by IEP are available on their website.
‘Pure Theft’: Tourist Posts Shocking Rome Gelato Bill
ltummy / Shutterstock
https://www.fodors.com/world/europe/italy/rome/experiences/news/american-tourists-50-gelato-bill-in-rome-sparks-outrage-and-a-viral-debate
They posted the warning on Facebook, and it went viral.
A Facebook post by an American tourist recently went viral. Nicole Ann, who was visiting Rome, shared a receipt from a gelateria showing a €44 ($50) charge for two ice creams. Her warning to “avoid Don Nino” snowballed into more than 1,000 comments, with some sympathizing with the tourists and others telling her to read Google reviews.
Tourist traps exist in every popular destination, and Florida resident Ann found this out the hard way. On June 5, she posted a receipt along with a photo of gelato from the shop Don Nino in Rome. Two “maxi” gelatos, along with toppings including cannoli, macarons, and whipped cream, cost her €44 ($50). Her post explained that they had stopped for gelato and asked for two small cups. However, the staff added toppings they didn’t request, implying that they were free of charge.
She also said they didn’t see prices anywhere and assumed the cost would be similar to what they had paid elsewhere. When they went to pay, it sounded like €14, and it was only when she looked at the receipt that she realized she had been charged €44. “Honestly it wasn’t even good, the worst out of all the gelato I had in my 10 days, I couldn’t even finish it. There are a few locations around the city.”
The comments on the post ranged from blaming the American tourist for not checking reviews and confirming prices to apologizing for the tourist trap. One of the most-liked comments said, “As an Italian living in Italy, I’m ashamed. It’s pure theft!” Others shared stories of getting overcharged for ice cream in Rome and receiving toppings they had not asked for. Locals recommended objecting to the charges before paying for an order or leaving it on the counter without paying.
Another tourist had a similar experience: “This happened to us in April, right by the Trevi fountain. The worst part was we asked the price and we still were charged €33 for two ice creams. Honestly, while the locals feel like ripping off tourists is a great idea, it will mean places like McDonald’s will keep popping up. It’s branding tourists can trust. I honestly don’t know why Italians do this. The worst part for me is that a local went in and wasn’t ripped off. I’m half Italian so understood the conversation. Regret just not walking away, not paying, and giving [the ice cream] back.”
At the same time, many commenters told Ann to check the Google reviews for the business, which has a 1.4-star rating. Don Nino has six locations in Rome listed on Google Maps, and reviews also point to high prices and sales staff misleading customers.
Others mentioned places to get authentic gelato, which they said shouldn’t cost more than €5. Many repeated that shops should clearly list prices and that tourists should not pay without confirming the cost. Look out for locals; if they’re not lining up, the establishment is probably a tourist trap.
Ann, however, decided to turn off comments after a barrage of people called her out. She said she won’t dispute the charges with her credit card, as some suggested. “It was a mistake, and I should have been better about double-checking the cost, but regardless, this is a full-blown scam.” She also clarified that this wasn’t her first time in Europe or ordering gelato. “We were exhausted and just wanted something quick/small where we were. We’ve had excellent gelato and never paid more than $10 even for a large, so this was a shock. It happens and it’s disheartening.”
She also said they traveled across Italy, but Rome was the only place where they repeatedly ran into scams.
It’s not unheard of for restaurants and shops to charge tourists more than locals. In Paris, a French newspaper uncovered cases in which restaurants charged perceived foreigners more than locals and asked for tips, which are not customary among Parisians.
Egyptian infrastructure, government initiatives underpin luxury hotel push
Country bridging Middle East and Africa battles with perception as unstable market
Tourists are flocking to Egypt to experience the Grand Egyptian Museum, which opened in November 2025. (Getty Images)
https://www.costar.com/article/1083889665/egyptian-infrastructure-government-initiatives-underpin-luxury-hotel-push
Despite a relative proximity to geopolitical conflict and instability elsewhere in the Middle East, Egypt has shown to be a safe haven for hotel investment and development.
Now, Egyptian officials are preparing for the country's next stage of growth by addressing core needs that could woo even more long-term investors.
According to W Hospitality’s report titled “Hotel Chain Development Pipelines in Africa 2026,” Egypt has a pipeline of 185 hotels and 45,984 rooms.
“Egypt dominates the African pipeline every year, with 37.1% of the total rooms this year, up from 32.5% (in 2025), and four times the number of rooms in second-placed Morocco,” reads the report. Of the 10 largest hotels and resorts in the pipeline, seven are in Egypt, an increase from it having three in the top 10 last year.
During a webinar hosted by the Future Hospitality Summit and HVS, Jonathan Worsley, chairman of The Bench, said Egypt is experiencing a defining moment as a tourism destination and hotel investment hot spot. In 2025, Egypt earned $17 billion in tourism revenue, and its aim by 2030 is to have 39 million visitors.
Ghada Shalaby, former vice minister of the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities and Arab Republic of Egypt, said one advantage Egypt has is that it is not dependent on tourism. She added the country doesn't necessarily need 30 million visitors to thrive.
“We would need to double our [hotel] room count, which will be difficult,” she said.
Cairo, however, does need more hotel rooms as it does not have enough to satisfy the ambitions of Vision 2030 and because it is a popular long-weekend destination for visitors from Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Shalaby said.
Fortunately for hoteliers in the country, a slight dip in hotel occupancy since the start of the U.S.-Iran war is not significantly affecting Egypt countrywide.
“We have seen numerous crises, and we have developed crisis management to enhance the outcome,” Shalaby said.
Hala Matar Choufany, president for the Middle East, Africa and South Asia and managing partner at HVS, said the Egyptian markets dependent on international and leisure have been less affected by the crisis, with their business on the books looking robust.
Egypt achieved 12% gross domestic product growth in 2025, 75% debt to gross domestic product ratio and received $30 billion net foreign direct investment last year, said Alain Debare, HVS' partner and head of investments and asset management for the Middle East and Africa.
Egypt “is not a tourism-recovery story but an investor-interest story,” Debare said.
There is room for international investment into Egypt, including investments that are institutionally worthy in such niches as repositioning, lifestyle and boutique hotels, resort upgrades and mixed-use, he said. Large amounts of capital are entering Egypt's luxury hotel space, notably in such developments as the New Alamein coastal expansion; Ras al Hekma; and Qatari Diar North Coast (Alam al Roum), with major investors including Qatari Diar, TravCo, MISR Bank, ADNIC and TMG-Icon.
In terms of operators, the large U.S. hotel companies are in the mix but are not the principal players, Debare said. He listed the seven key international operators, in order of hotel room count, as TravCo Group International Holding (11,741 rooms); Accor (12,924); Pickalbatros Hotels (11,164); H World Hotels (5,115); Marriott International (6,392); Sunrise (4,023); and IHG Hotels & Resorts (2,848).
Of Egypt's key cities, Alexandria remains under-optimized, Debare added.
Most of Egypt's new hotel supply is in the luxury segment, Choufany said. More markets are seeing their hotels move further upscale via new developments, repositings and renovations.
“The question is a function on execution. Will [developers] be able to deliver those products and uplift the market? There are a lot of existing opportunities that are being under-managed,” she said.
Maged Salah, managing director of real estate investments at Misr Abu Dhabi, is among the Egyptian developers looking for opportunities. While there are some possible deals still left to be made, he said Egypt has already gone through various seasons where investors have had to adapt.
“Whoever invested in those times are the ones making money now,” he said.
The Egyptian government is lending a hand to support its tourism and hospitality industry. Shalaby said one government initiative that has helped the country’s hotel-market transition is the recodifying of hotels, “to make sure luxury means luxury, midscale means midscale, in a market still dominated by package travel.” Another initiative is to reduce red tape around conversions of non-hotel buildings into hotels.
Salah said not all of Egypt's 30 million visitors will stay in a luxury hotel, but all will see a luxury experience. He added the 5.4 million-square-foot Grand Egyptian Museum — which opened on Nov. 1 in Giza and is the largest museum in the world chronicling a single civilization — will be a major draw.
Infrastructure
Behind Egypt’s rise is a major focus on building up its infrastructure. Choufany said one major task is to bridge the gap between the country’s ambition and the ability of investors to fund change.
“That is a real challenge that requires intensive infrastructure development. … Investment is still centered on Cairo and its new submarkets, a few extending outside of the [capital],” she said.
Among infrastructure additions are the expected high-speed rail and Cairo monorail services; improvements to major roads; and upgrades to its major airports, notably in Cairo and Hurghada.
Behind these developments are new laws that reduce paperwork, increase transparency and simplify long-term financial tools that help investors and banks be more aligned, Salah said.
“There is a major need to be more attractive to investors, who need better platforms and touchdown, things that make [them] more comfortable … and this extends to the exit of capital. I see no issue for repatriation of profits for foreign investors. I have not heard one case of [there being a problem], something that would harm the country’s credibility,” he said.
Initiatives to improve the hospitality workforce, especially in the seasonal resort market, also is providing investor confidence, Choufany said. Investors themselves have to put the work in to fully understand how each Egyptian submarket behaves and matures, she added.
But Egypt is still fighting a reputation that it's a market that lacks stability, Shalaby said. Salah agreed that there's plenty of room for stable investment across the country.
“Egypt is not a high-risk market for investment. … Overspill developments from the larger projects might be where the money is to be made,” Salah added.
Remington Hospitality targets full-service hotels to grow third-party management portfolio
Summer leisure demand is 'fully baked,' CEO says
Remington Hospitality assumed management of the Aruna Resort & Villas in Ambergris Caye, Belize. (Remington Hospitality)
https://www.costar.com/article/82567029/remington-hospitality-targets-full-service-hotels-to-grow-third-party-management-portfolio
By Bryan Wroten
NEW YORK — Nearing the midpoint of the year, Remington Hospitality’s chief executive said the company’s performance is ahead of pace and actively growing.
The Dallas-based hotel operator signed 17 deals in the first four months of the year, all for third-party management of hotels, Remington CEO Ben Perelmuter said in an interview at the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum. The agreements are a mix of full-service hotels and small portfolios of upscale select-service properties.
One of Remington's newest properties is the One GT, a luxury hotel in George Town in the Cayman Islands. The 97-room property includes residences and has a rooftop pool and bar that overlooks where the cruise ships pull in, he said. It’s located five minutes from Seven Mile Beach.
“It’s kind of the start of the redevelopment of George Town, and this kicks things off, so we’re really excited,” Perelmuter said.
Remington also recently assumed operations of the Aruna Resort & Villas in Ambergris Caye, Belize, further growing the company’s presence in the Caribbean and Latin America region. It has a pipeline of deals in various stages in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Belize, and Peru.
“I've never seen anything like it in terms of some of the quality assets that we've signed that either have broken ground or [will] soon break ground out there,” he said.
Every country in the Caribbean and Latin America is unique, so hotel operators can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach, Perelmuter said. There are nuances with currency, banking, regulations, employment law, and other factors. The fundamentals of getting guests in and out of the resorts and managing costs don’t fluctuate much, though.
Remington has put a lot into its commercial strategy in that region because there’s a big opportunity to optimize revenue through its commercial vehicle, he said. The company has an advantage over competing third-party operators coming to the region by having been there for a few years now.
One of the newest hotels in Remington Hospitality's third-party management portfolio is the One GT in George Town in the Cayman Islands. (Remington Hospitality)
“It takes a lot of work, and it's a lot more of a lift to get acclimated to these different areas,” Perelmuter said. “Once you're in and you can start to create some scale there, then it becomes more fluid.”
Remington is focused on full-service luxury and lifestyle hotels in the region, along with newer generations of select-service portfolios, he said. Achieving scale in its markets is important as that provides a better chance of hitting the key performance index targets because there are enough employees to staff at different properties and other synergies.
“That’s what we’ve focused on in the U.S.,” he said, adding Remington has concentrations in Texas, Florida, Georgia and other locations in the Southwest and Midwest with a good presence on the West Coast as well.
Remington has a lot of experience operating full-service hotels, Perelmuter said. The company has been around for decades, and its core asset class has been full-service properties.
“We have the bones, the knowledge, the infrastructure, the capabilities to handle those types of properties,” he said. “Not all groups have that experience and have that type of capacity to execute.”
For example, with food and beverage, Remington has a department focused on concepting and execution, he said. The department has experience and a history of successes opening hotel restaurants, concepting new outlets and driving costs in the right direction.
Remington has this skill set, having been part of the Ashford Group of Companies and managing hotels for the publicly traded real estate investment trusts Ashford Hospitality Trust and Braemar Hotels & Resorts, he said.
“Right now, the bones of Remington are set to execute at that level, so we take what we have and we just continue to build on it,” he said.
Despite Remington growing its third-party management operations over the years, Perelmuter said there’s still some hangover from the company's past as a former hotel owner-operator.
“Every day that moves forward with another third-party deal that we consume, we just move more toward that complete model of being a third-party operator,” he said, adding that Remington's portfolio is already 70% third-party-managed hotels with the expectation to reach 85% by the end of next year.
From a macro perspective, Remington’s hotels are seeing good lift in revenue per available room, Perelmuter said. They’re ahead of where the team anticipated they would be, driven mostly by rates and volume of group business. The second quarter has had already about double the RevPAR lift Remington saw year to date.
This summer is shaping up well despite questions earlier on over concerns about higher gas prices and other disruptions, he said.
“We have the summer fully baked from a leisure perspective,” he said. “We're ahead of pace in the group for the rest of the year.”
The impact from the FIFA World Cup matches will likely come in below expectations, but the rate lift and other demand segments have been positive, Perelmuter said.
“There’s no real red flags coming off the summer” into the third and fourth quarters, he said.
The first two quarters of 2026 were fantastic in that they doubled Remington’s momentum, he said. Heading into the next quarter, it has a good shot in the arm without any major headwinds visible on the other side and is a bit ahead of pace.
“Just keeping the train on the tracks and being able to carry the uptick through the end of the year is where our heads are,” along with hitting its KPIs, he said.
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