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There's nothing like Italian pizza and wine

September 28, 2015

A pizza in Rome, a glass of wine in Tuscany: Italy was the favorite EU destination last year for travelers coming from outside the Euro bloc, official data showed.

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Piazza Navona in Rome © Iakov Kalinin
Image: Fotolia/Iakov Kalinin

Of more than 300 million overnight stays by non-EU tourists, 17.5 per cent were in Italy, the European Union's statistical office, Eurostat, said in a statement. Britain, Spain, France and Germany were the next most popular destinations, accounting respectively for 13.9 per cent, 13.5 per cent, 12.2 per cent and 9.1 per cent of the total.

Eurostat noted that tourism was largely an internal affair in the EU, as visitors from outside the bloc - mainly from the United States and Russia, and to a lesser extent from China, Japan and Brazil - represented only 10 per cent of total hotel stays.

But it also noted that the EU was attracting an increasing number of tourists from beyond its borders. Compared to 2005, arrivals from China surged by 282 per cent, it said, while those from Russia and Brazil increased by 248 per cent and 215 per cent, respectively. Over the same period, the number of US visitors to the EU rose by 13 per cent, and tourism from economically stagnant Japan fell by 11 per cent.

ej/jt (dpa, epd, Eurostat)