EU witnesses some triple Chinese tourists over past decade

The European Union (EU) has enjoyed an external tourism boom over the past decade while Chinese tourists have emerged as the most significant contributor with a roughly threefold growth, official data showed on Friday.

Compared with 2005, extra-EU tourism in the EU increased by 75 percent in 2014, particularly driven by a boom in the number of nights spent by tourists from China with growth of 282 percent, EU's statistic agency Eurostat said in a press release ahead of the World Tourism Day on Sept. 27.

Tremendous increase also registered for those from Russia and Brazil with 248 percent and 215 percent respectively. The nights spent by visitors of the United States witnessed a moderate increase of 13 percent. However, the figure saw a decrease for those from Japan with 11 percent, Eurostat said.

Nevertheless, Chinese visitors spent some 15 million nights in the EU in tourist accommodation in 2014, accounting 5 percent of the total and ranked the third after the United States and Russia, which shared 17.8 percent and 14.9 percent respectively.

In the continent, tourism is still "an internal affair" as nearly 90 percent of tourism nights are spent by EU residents, meaning that tourists from outside the EU account for only around 10 percent of the total, Eurostat concluded. Endit