EVOLUTION OF FOREIGN TOURISTS NUMBER IN THE EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES

Abstract

Tourism became one of the most important economic fields and it experienced significant increases all over the world. In the EU it is also a very important economic sector and five of the EU Member States are in the top ten destinations of the world. In this article we analyze the evolution of arrivals and nights spent of the foreign tourists and total tourists, as well as the occupancy rates of accommodation capacities in the EU countries. All the indicators analyzed have increasing trends and there are high differences among the EU Member States in terms of total number of arrivals, nights spent and occupancy rate. The share of foreign tourists in total arrivals and nights spent number differs quite much from country to country in the EU. Not all the Eastern and Central European countries managed to attract foreign tourists in the same degree after the EU accession, but some of them used this opportunity and, as a result, intensified their tourism activity. However, the most visited areas remain the ones from Southern Europe.

Keywords

• : tourism
• European Union
• arrivals
• nights spent
• occupancy rate of accommodation capacity