ANTWERP - Some people rather spend their vacation completely cold and icy. Lately lots of seats have been booked on cruises to the coldest parts of the world. Not only Alaska, but even Antarctica appears on the notorious list of cruise itineraries.
Cruising to the pleasant warm waters of the Caribbean and Mediterranean doesn't find favour with its travellers like it used to. Nowadays people like cruise itineraries to colder parts in the world better than the usual warm ones.
Alaska has long been the leader of the popular cold-cruise destinations. But also destinations as the Baltic Sea, the northern reaches of Canada, Greenland and even Antarctica are starting to surface. According to the Antarctica Treaty Secretariat, there are more tourists visiting Antarctica for this spring and summer compared with the number of visitors during 1992. What used to be a number of 6.750 is now a number of more than 35.000 visitors.
Therefore some cruise lines heading to Antarctica have brought in some new itineraries to the cruise market. A few examples of such cruise lines are Crystal Cruises, Hurtigruten, Cruise North Expeditions, Hapag-Lloyd, Princess Cruises and Abercrombie & Kent.
Antwerp - In 2007, the number of overnight stays in European hotels has increased with 3,1 per cent in comparison with the previous year. The number of overnight stays of compatriots increased with 3,6 per cent and the overnight stays of tourists with 2,4 per cent.
The numbers become clear from Eurostat. Spain was the most popular, followed by Italy, Germany, France and Great Britain. Those 5 countries were good for 70 per cent of the overnight stays in Europe. Cyprus was the only country that did not well. Romania, Latvia, Malta and the Netherlands also saw an increase but not as much as the other countries.
The number of overnight stays in Europe this year are equally devided over tourists in their own country and foreign tourists. The largest number of foreign tourist were to find in Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Greece, Austria and Bulgaria. Romania, Germany, Swedes and Finland couldnt count on their foreign tourists.
