Tourism trips – Three quarters of all trips by EU residents are within their own country – Majority of the trips are made by car

Summer is coming and we want to go on a trip … but do you know how Europeans travel? The last statistic of Eurostat tells us everything in detail.

In 2017, EU residents made 1.3 billion trips with overnight stays that amounted to almost 6.4 billion nights. The average trip length was 5.1 nights. Compared with 2016, the number of tourism trips by EU residents increased by 4%. Three quarters (73%) of all trips were spent within the country of residence (domestic trips), while one quarter (27%) were abroad (outbound trips), of which 21% to other EU countries and 6% to destinations outside the EU.

Means of transport

The most common means of transport for trips was private or rented motor vehicles (predominantly cars) (64%), followed by airplanes (17%), trains (11%), buses (6%) and water vessels (2%). Airplanes served as the main means of transport for over half of outbound trips (56%), while for domestic trips EU residents travelled mainly by motor vehicles (76%), followed by rail (13%).
Most of the travel by air was for personal reasons (82%), while the remaining 18% of air trips were for professional purposes.

For more information

Eurostat 

Press release