In the EU27, in 2006, nearly 40% of all trips of four nights or more were made abroad, but there were large variations between Member States. No data was available for Malta in these statistics.

EU27 inhabitants made 438 million trips of four nights or more in 2006. Of those trips, 61% were domestic (made within the country) and 39% outbound (made in other countries). Among the Member States for which these data are available, there was a preference for domestic trips in twelve Member States and outbound in twelve. Over three quarters of trips made by the population in Greece (89%), Romania (88%), Spain (86%), France (83%), Poland (81%), Portugal (79%) and Italy (75%) were domestic trips. On the other hand, over 70% of all trips were outbound trips in Luxembourg (99%), Belgium (81%), Ireland (77%) and Slovenia (72%). These figures come from a publication from Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, which deals with tourism in the EU by age group.

30% of trips of people aged 65 or more are made abroad

When observing the travel pattern by age group, domestic travel remained most popular in all age groups in the EU27 in 2006: 61% of trips of four nights or more for those aged 15-24 were domestic, while this applied to 58% of all trips made by persons aged 25-64 and for the age group 65 and over it was 71%.

For young people aged 15 to 24, the travel pattern was nearly the same as for the average in all Member States, except for Latvia (57% of all trips were domestic for those aged 15-24 compared with 47% for the average) and the United Kingdom (64% of all trips were outbound for those aged 15-24 compared with 54% for the average).

For those aged 65 and over, domestic trips were in most Member States more frequent than the average. The highest differences were observed in Lithuania (85% of all trips were domestic for those aged 65 and over compared with 38% for the average), Hungary (92% compared with 64%) and Slovenia (54% compared with 28%).