A report reveals that Belgium has experienced a tourism boom in 2018.
How do you know whether a country is attractive or not? Tourism is not the end of the story, but touristic figures definitely provide you with a nice overview of attractiveness.
While 2016 was a very difficult year for tourism in Belgium (the terrorist attacks in 2016 have partially been a reason why fewer tourists rushed to the Kingdom), it seems that the tourists love Belgium again.
Based on Eurostat statistics, NimbleFins has published a report on tourism growth across Europe. It points out the fact that in 2018, non-resident tourists spent over 1.4 billion of nights in the EU28 plus Iceland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland. If you only have a look at the EU28, the number of nights increased by 2.2% overall.
Although the winner, in terms of tourism growth, was Macedonia last year (+22%), Belgium ranked second if you consider the EU Member states. Latvia indeed lead the rank (+10.1%), just before Belgium (+8.9%). Then you can find Lithuania (+8%), the Netherlands (+7.6%) and Sweden (+6.6%).
In terms of absolute figures, France is however the champion of tourism growth, as 7.7 million more non-resident nights have been recorded from 2017 to 2018. In Belgium, this absolute growth reaches 1.7 million of nights, which results in 20 millions of nights last year.
Belgium ranked #2 in the EU 28 in 2018 for % growth in popularity with tourists.
NimbleFins analysed data from Eurostat and found that in 2018 Belgium had the second largest percentage growth in tourism (i.e., % increase in nights spent by tourists in the country) among EU 28 countries. Here’s what they found:
– 8.9% increase in the number of nights spent by tourists in Belgium in 2018
– Belgium ranked #2 best in terms of tourist popularity growth (as a %) in EU 28, behind Latvia
– Compare this to the EU average growth in tourist nights of just 2.2%
– ~1.7 million more tourist nights in 2018 than 2017 in Belgium
