Romania, among least chosen countries for EU residents' holidays, while Spain tops ranking

Romania was among the least preferred holiday destinations for EU citizens in 2012, with less than 2 percent of holiday nights spent by EU residents. Most popular was Spain, which recorded 20 percent of the nights spent abroad. Romania had only 1.3 percent, better than Bulgaria and Cyprus, each with 1.1 percent of nights spent by EU residents abroad. Slovakia, Malta, Finland, Estonia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Luxembourg all recorded less than 1 percent of EU residents’ night spent abroad, according to data from Eurostat. France and Italy were both above 10 percent: 12.7 percent, and 11.7 percent, respectively. Hungary, Denmark and Ireland were close to Romania in terms of night spent by EU residents holidaying in these countries, each with 1.5 percent. In 2012, the most recent reference year for which complete data was available at the time of writing, residents of the European Union (EU-28) made 1.2 billion trips, for personal or professional purpose, and spent 6.165 billion nights during those trips. Tourist expenditure amounted to EUR 400 billion, according to Eurostat. More than 3 out of 4 trips (76 percent) were domestic trips, but in terms of nights spent and expenditure, domestic trips accounted for 60 percent and 47 percent of the total, respectively. A neighboring or nearby country was the preferred foreign destination for trips of nearly all the European tourists. However, this was not the case for tourists from Hungary (Germany), Romania (Italy) and the UK (Spain). editor@romania-insider.com