A mother is standing with her daughter on her arm and taking a selfie. A church and a christmas tree are in the background.

In December 2022, EU residents made an estimated 92 million tourism trips, representing 8.6% of all the trips made throughout that year. Of these, 73 million were domestic travels, accounting for 9.0% of the total domestic trips made in 2022. An additional 19 million trips were made abroad, representing 7.1% of the total foreign trips. 

The enduring tradition of favouring domestic trips during the winter holidays and Christmas season causes a visible peak in somewhat inactive winter months. In December 2022, the number of domestic trips was almost 4 times higher than the number of foreign trips (in the other months of the year, the number of domestic trips was on average 3 times higher than the number of foreign trips). 

Line graph: Trips of EU residents by month of departure and destination, in million, 2022

Source dataset: tour_dem_ttmd

The boost in domestic trips during the end-of-year period can be attributed to people visiting friends and relatives. This was the purpose reported for more than half of the domestic trips in December (whereas in the other months of the year, this purpose accounted for around 1 in 3 tourism trips). 

Romania, Bulgaria and Malta – highest December peaks

Looking at national data, residents of Romania stand out with most 2022 travels concentrated in December – 17.1%. Residents of Bulgaria (12.5%) and Malta (11.8%) followed. In contrast, trips during December accounted for 5.2% of the total trips made by residents of Greece, 6% of trips made by residents of Lithuania, and 6.4% of trips made by residents of Sweden.

Bar chart: Tourism trips in December 2022, % of trips in 2022

Source dataset: tour_dem_ttmd

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Methodological notes

  • Data at EU level are estimated.
  • Denmark: data not available.
  • Trips by month of departure: the scope of the data in tour_dem_ttmd is the trips that ended during the reference year. In the survey conducted to collect this data, respondents indicate the month of departure for trips that ended during a given reference period. This way, it is possible that respondents report trips that started in a previous reference period (for instance a trip that ended in January 2023, but started in December 2022). To get a comprehensive picture of the trips that started in December 2022, the number of trips for December 2022, is estimated by adding trips by month of departure ‘December’ and ‘December of previous calendar year’ from the table. 
  • Trips by purpose: Data on tourism trips by purpose is available in table tour_dem_tttot, for annual data, the data broken down by month used for this article comes from a separate extraction from the unpublished microdata. 

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