Tourists in the European Union more than tripled the nights they spent in short-stay accommodation in December compared with a year earlier, the EU’s statistics office said on Monday, though levels remained well below pre-pandemic norms.
The nights spent in EU short-stay tourist accommodation surged 237 percent to 102.2 million nights in December compared to a year earlier, Eurostat said, though this remained 27 percent below the 2019 figure.
Easing coronavirus restrictions and widespread vaccination campaigns helped tourism recover from the early summer, though the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant and fresh travel curbs slowed progress over the winter.
Over the entire year, nights spent in tourist lodgings were up 27 percent from 2020, but remained more than a third under pre-pandemic levels.
The southern coastal nations of Greece, Spain and Croatia led the recovery, all up more than 70 percent, while Austria, Latvia, and Slovakia saw tourism fall still further from pandemic lows. – Reuters
