Tourism statistics in the European statistical system - 2008 data

Europe is a major tourist destination and six of the Member States are among the world's top ten destinations for holiday-makers. As a result, tourism plays an important role in terms of its economic and employment potential, while presenting social and environmental implications; these twin characteristics drive the demand for reliable and harmonised statistics within this field. This publication aims at giving a broad overview of the available tourism-related statistics at the level of the Eur…

Europe is a major tourist destination and six of the Member States are among the world's top ten destinations for holiday-makers. As a result, tourism plays an important role in terms of its economic and employment potential, while presenting social and environmental implications; these twin characteristics drive the demand for reliable and harmonised statistics within this field. This publication aims at giving a broad overview of the available tourism-related statistics at the level of the European Union on the basis of the latest available results. The focus is on data at the EU level, but the analysis includes data at the Member State level and cross-country comparisons of the tourism indicators. Besides the core tourism statistics data compiled on the basis of the Directive, the article also includes results from other fields of official statistics that can be relevant for analysing tourism in Europe.