Brussels, 28/09/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Union celebrated European Tourism Day on 27 September (EUROPE 10461), and Eurostat published the statistics to mark this event, to take stock of holiday trips by EU residents in 2010, both inside and outside the country in which they live.
Last year, 1 billion holiday trips were made by the residents of the 27 member states, and more than three quarters of these were domestic, in other words inside the country of residence, and around one quarter were made abroad. As regards the length of these trips, domestic holidays were, unsurprisingly, mainly of a short duration (from 1 to 3 nights), whilst trips abroad were more likely to be of a longer duration (four nights and above).
In 2001, the greatest proportions of domestic travel were observed in Romania (94% of all holiday trips), Spain (90%) and Bulgaria and Greece (91% each). In all member states, the proportion of short-stay domestic holiday trips was higher than that of non-stay domestic holiday trips, with the exception of Greece. The highest proportions of short-stay domestic holidays were recorded in Latvia (73%), Finland (70%), Denmark (67%), Spain (65%), Bulgaria and Portugal (64% each). The highest proportions of long-stay domestic trips were to be seen in Greece (47%), France (39%), Italy and Poland (35% each) and in Romania (34%). Additionally, trips abroad represented half or more of all holiday trips in just five member states: Luxembourg (nearly 100% of all trips), Belgium (76%), Slovenia (56%), the Netherlands (53%) and Austria (50%). (IL/transl.fl)