Eurostat–Statistics Explained: Tourism statistics, Επικαιροποίηση 24 Νοεμβρίου 2014.
This article provides information on recent statistics in relation to tourism in the European Union (EU). Tourism plays an important role in the EU because of its economic and employment potential, as well as its social and environmental implications. Tourism statistics are not only used to monitor the EU’s tourism policies but also its regional and sustainable development policies.
Main statistical findings
Tourism — demand and supply
Residents (aged 15 and above) from within the EU-28 made 1.1 billion tourism trips in 2013, for personal or business purposes. Short trips (of one to three nights) accounted for more than half (57.5 %) of the total number of trips made (see Table 1), while three quarters (75.3 %) of all trips made were to domestic destinations, with the remainder abroad.
In some EU Member States, over half of the total number of tourism trips made in 2013 were to destinations abroad; this was the case for Luxembourg, Belgium, Malta and Slovenia (as well as Switzerland). However, less than 10 % of the trips taken by residents of Romania, Spain, Greece (data are for 2012) and Portugal were abroad. These figures appear to be influenced by both the size of the Member States and their geographical location (smaller and more northerly countries tended to report a higher propensity for their residents to travel abroad).
It is estimated that some 60.9 % of the EU-28’s population aged 15 or over took part in tourism for personal purposes in 2012 (aggregate for 2013 not yet available), in other words they made at least one tourist trip for personal purposes during the year. Again, large differences can be observed between the EU Member States, as this participation rate ranged from 22.2 % in Bulgaria to 88.5 % in Finland.
From the supply perspective, it is estimated that there were nearly 562 thousand tourist accommodation establishments active within the EU-28 in 2013 and that together they provided just over 30 million bed places (see Table 2). Nearly one third (32.3 %) of all the bed places in the EU-28 were concentrated in just two of the EU Member States, namely France (5.0 million bed places) and Italy (4.7 million bed places), followed by Germany, the United Kingdom (data are for 2012) and Spain.
During recent years, the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments has generally shown an upward trend (see Figure 1). However, there was a short-lived downturn in the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments in 2008 and 2009 as a consequence of the financial and economic crisis: the number of tourism nights in the EU-28 fell by 0.6 % in 2008 and by a further 2.1 % in 2009. In 2010, however, the number of nights spent increased by 4.7 % and this positive development continued, with growth of 3.3 % in 2011 and 4.3 % in 2012. In 2013, the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments in the EU-28 reached a peak of 2.6 billion nights, up by 2.2 % compared with 2012.
