An analysis by the hotel price comparison site, Trivago, found that the UK was this year the fifth most popular travel destination for Europeans, up from eighth place last year.
Other European destinations that come ahead of the UK are France in fourth place, Italy in fifth place, Germany in second and Spain in first.
European travellers most likely to visit the UK are the French, for whom the UK is the fifth most popular tourist destination, and the Spanish, who rank the UK seventh in their list of tourism priorities. Italian and Garman travellers ranked the UK in eighth and ninth place respectively. In each case, these scores are higher than last year, said Trivago.
Trivago’s Hotel Destination Trends report (tHDT) examined the travel trends of European tourists based on over 165,000 daily hotel search requests for all destinations.
British travel trends
Meanwhile, the data also found that the UK is the most popular destination for British travellers.
Around 27 per cent of British travellers are now looking at destinations within the country, followed by 13 per cent looking at Spain and 7 per cent at the US. Other popular destinations include: Italy (6 per cent), France (5 per cent), Greece, Turkey and Germany (4 per cent each), and Egypt and Portugal (2 per cent each).
Of the Brits travelling inside the country, 15 per cent are heading to the capital this summer. The next most popular British city is Manchester (4.4 per cent), followed by Blackpool (3.9 per cent), Edinburgh (3.6 per cent), York (3.3 per cent), Brighton (3 per cent), Liverpool (2.9 per cent) and Glasgow (2.9 per cent).
Trivago spokesperson Romain Hefti told BigHospitality: “More visitors from abroad and an increase in British nationals travelling domestically is definitely a positive development for the British hospitality industry. This should help offset the first quarter’s decline in occupancy and lead to sustained revpar growth over the summer.”