The tables compare the number of tourists explaining why and where they travelled abroad over the course of five years, starting from 1994.
Overall, there was an upward trend in all reasoning categories, in which visiting abroad for holiday purposes dominated other explanations over the timeframe, the opposite held true for the category of other reasons. Notably, Western Europe was the most popular tourist destination, while North America was least attractive to foreign travelers.
Looking first at the main reasons for visitors’ abroad visiting, there was a total of roughly 22,000 people going abroad in 1994, with more than 15,000 of these going for their holiday, representing the most common reason for the trip. In stark contrast, only 982 of those explained that they went abroad because of other reasons, which was nearly half of that of the initial reason. Meanwhile, the figures for business and friend and relative visits were comparable, ranging from 2000 to 3000 tourists. By 1998, the total number of people visiting abroad increased to approximately 30,000, increasing almost by 8000 visitors. Going for holiday was still the dominant reason, with a significant improvement of almost 5000 people, reaching around 20,000 visitors. This was closely twentyfold higher than that of other reasons segment. The two remaining segments witnessed a gradually growth to around more than 3000 visitors each.
Regarding to different tourist destinations, Western Europe was the most famous one, witnessing around 19,000 foreign visitors in 1994, ultimately reaching the highest point of almost 24,000 foreigners visiting in the final surveyed year. In contrast, although the number of foreign visitors increased over the timeframe, North America was still the least popular place for people, with only 919 people going to in 1994. This number moderately increased to roughly 2000 people in the last investigated year. Other areas attracted between 1000 to 2,500 foreign tourists over the timeframe, approximately double that of North America.