Data extracted in January 2025.
Planned article update: December 2025.
Highlights
Tourism trips of Europeans is a Eurostat online publication consisting of seven articles providing recent statistics on tourism demand in the European Union (EU) and EFTA countries. It discusses residents' patterns of tourism and the trips they made, and takes a close look at tourists' socio-demographic characteristics (such as age and gender) and characteristics of the trips, such as destination, means of transport and accommodation, purpose and expenditure.
On line publication
Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 of 6 July 2011 concerning European statistics on tourism aims at harmonising these statistics in order to compile comparable data for the European Union. The national statistical authorities collect – usually via sample surveys – a wide range of information on domestic and foreign trips made by residents of their country.
Different aspects of tourism demand are dealt with in a set of detailed articles:
- Characteristics of tourism trips - How and for what purpose do Europeans travel?
- Participation in tourism - What proportion of the population makes tourism trips throughout the year?
- Top destinations - Where do Europeans travel?
- Seasonality - When do Europeans travel?
- Expenditure - How much do Europeans spend on their tourism trips?
- Intra-EU tourism flows - What is the size of inbound and outbound flows within the EU?
Main findings
In 2023, EU residents aged 15 years and over made over 1.1 billion tourism trips (see Table 1) with an average length of 5.0 overnight stays per trip. In all, 56.5% of these trips were short trips of 1 to 3 overnight stays, while 43.5% were trips of 4 nights or more. Europeans tend to prefer trips inside the country where they live. Nearly 3 out of 4 trips were domestic, where they spent on average 3.9 nights. For foreign trips, the length of stay was longer (7.8 nights on average).
In terms of expenditure, long foreign trips take up the biggest share (48.9%) of the estimated €555 086 million expenditure on tourism trips. Expenditure (per individual) on a tourism trip was on average €485, while expenditure per night was €97 (ranging from €60 per night on long domestic trips to €223 per night on short foreign trips).
Of course, these figures for the European Union at aggregate level do not show the different patterns observed across countries. The diversity of tourism by Europeans is more closely analysed in the detailed articles mentioned above.
Source: Eurostat (tour_dem_tttot), (tour_dem_tntot), (tour_dem_extot)
Data sources
Collection of annual data on trips of EU residents
The collection consists of harmonised data collected by the Member States in the frame of the Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning European statistics on tourism.
The scope of observation for data on tourism trips are all tourism trips with at least 1 overnight stay, made by the resident population aged 15 years and over. It includes trips made for private or professional purpose, outside the usual environment.
The scope of observation for the data on participation in tourism are the residents of the country, aged 15 years and over, and refers only to tourism for personal purposes, excluding trips made for professional reasons.
Context
The EU is a major tourist destination, with 6 EU countries among the world's top 10 destinations for holidaymakers, according to [1] data. Tourism is an important activity in the EU which contributes to employment and economic growth, as well as to the development of rural, peripheral or less-developed areas. Tourism is estimated to account for 4.5% to the EU's gross value added. These characteristics drive the demand for reliable and harmonised statistics on this activity, as well as within the wider context of regional policy and sustainable development policy areas.
Explore further
Other articles
Database
- Tourism (tour), see:
- Trips of EU residents - annual data (tour_dem)
Thematic section
Publications
Selected datasets
- Tourism (t_tour), see:
- Annual data on trips of EU residents (t_tour_dem)
Methodology
- Trips of EU residents - annual data (ESMS metadata file — tour_dem_esms)