Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union (EU), has published preliminary estimates of tourism performance for the past year. As noted, there has been a significant improvement in travel dynamics, Dip.org.ua reports with reference to Travel Pulse.
In December 2021, the number of nights spent by tourists in EU hotels and inns increased by 237 percent to 102.2 million, more than three times the number of nights recorded in the same month in 2020. The total annual number of nights spent in hotels has reached 1.8 billion – 27 percent more than in 2020 and two-thirds of the figures in 2019.
The recovery of activity in the industry compared to 2020 was shown by almost all EU countries: 21 out of 24 member states registered positive trends. According to this indicator, the leaders were those countries that introduced less stringent entry restrictions: Spain, Greece and Croatia. Their tourism revenues have grown by more than 70 percent compared to 2020. Only in Austria, Latvia and Slovakia, the number of nights spent by tourists in 2021 decreased even more than in the previous year, falling by more than 18 percent compared to 2020 levels.
Tourism in Latvia, Slovakia, Malta and Hungary has been hit the hardest by the pandemic, with figures in 2021 accounting for 50 percent of 2019 figures. Denmark and the Netherlands lost only 20 percent of 2019. The EU average was 63 percent of 2019.
According to the U.S. News & World Report, a significant proportion of travelers in the EU in 2021 were the citizens of these countries themselves. They accounted for 68 percent of nights spent in hotels, while visitors from other countries within the EU accounted for 24 percent. Five percent of the rest are tourists from other European countries that are not members of the union, the share of guests from states outside Europe is only three percent.