September 2026 · Market guide · 3 min read

Five Things Worth Checking Before You Pick a Country, and Three Everyone Checks That Don't Matter

GDP growth and ease-of-doing-business rankings rarely predict market entry success. Five things that actually do, from two years running 30-country operations.

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For two years I managed marketing and partnership operations across a travel group with more than 60 offices in 30 countries. Every quarter, headquarters reviewed office performance side by side, and the pattern that emerged had almost nothing to do with the macro indicators anyone would have used to justify entering those countries in the first place.

A mid sized office in a country with modest GDP growth regularly outperformed a much larger office in a country everyone had predicted would be the star performer, based on population size and projected tourism growth. The difference was not the market. It was whether the local team had a small number of real, working relationships with named partners, or whether they were still cold calling a directory.

Why office performance had nothing to do with GDP

That experience shaped what I actually check now before recommending a country, and it is a short list.

First, can I name ten companies today that would plausibly buy or partner within twelve months. Not a category of companies, actual names. If I cannot produce ten names in an afternoon of research, the market is not ready, no matter what the country level statistics say.

Second, does a working intermediary ecosystem exist, meaning agents, resellers, or local partners who already deal with foreign companies in this category. A country can have huge demand and still be nearly impossible to enter if nobody local is set up to work with outside firms. This is different from market size. It is about whether the door mechanism exists.

Naming ten buyers and finding the door in

Third, is hiring in the sector actually happening locally, right now, not projected to happen. Job postings for relevant roles are a far more current indicator than any forecast, because postings reflect budget that has already been approved.

Fourth, what is the specific regulatory friction for this sector in this country, not the general ease of doing business. A water treatment company faces municipal tender rules that have nothing to do with how easy it is to register a company. Generic rankings hide the one rule that actually matters.

Fifth, can the team physically get there often enough to build relationships without it being a financial or logistical burden. Markets that require a face to face relationship, which most B2B markets do, need a travel rhythm that is sustainable, not a single kickoff trip followed by silence.

Hiring signals, regulatory friction, and travel rhythm

The three things everyone checks and shouldn't weigh heavily: GDP growth rate, because it says nothing about a specific sector or specific buyer readiness. Ease of doing business rankings, because they measure company registration speed, not whether your actual buyers are reachable. And total population or market size estimates, because a market of 200 million people with no accessible distribution path is worth less than a market of 8 million with three willing intermediaries already in place.

None of the five things I check require paid research. They require picking up the phone, reading job boards, and asking a handful of people in the sector direct questions. The travel group's best performing offices were never in the countries the headquarters slide deck had predicted would win. They were in the countries where someone on the ground had already done the unglamorous work of finding real people to work with.

Why GDP and population rankings mislead

Pick the country the way you would pick a first hire. Look at what is actually there, not at what the spreadsheet says should be there.

Updated: September 2026