New Survey Highlights Travelers' Desire to Visit Europe When It Reopens

A recent survey conducted by SchengenVisaInfo.com has discovered that around 80 percent of travelers from outside the European Union (E.U.) and the passport-free zone intend to visit the Schengen area within the first three months of the reopening of its external borders.

SchengenVisaInfo.com collected responses from 2,636 participants—nationals of various third-countries (referring to non-E.U./non-Schengen members)—from June 1 to June 10, 2020, to get a sense of their upcoming travel plans. The European Commission has recommended that all 26 Schengen-area member countries at least partially lift restrictions on international travelers beginning July 1.

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The Schengen passport-free zone, the world’s largest free-travel area, began by reopening its internal borders on June 15 in hopes of enabling Europeans to enjoy some portion of their summer holiday season and restarting the tourism sector that had ground to a standstill back in March, when borders were slammed shut amid COVID-19.

It turns out that many travelers, some of whom were forced to delay their travel plans due to lockdown, are hoping to visit the borderless territory as soon as possible and mainly for tourism purposes.

Close to 63 percent of respondents intend to travel to the Schengen area within the very first month of border reopenings, with an additional 20 percent saying they’ll go within the first three months. Roughly thirteen percent indicated that they hope to make it there sometimes later this year.

Most-Visited Members

Nearly 20 percent of all survey participants said that they’d first be bound for Germany once the entry ban has been lifted, while another fourteen percent pointed to France as their intended destination. Other frontrunners included the Netherlands with eight percent of the vote, and Italy and Spain with around six percent each.

According to SchengenVisaInfo.com’s research, Germany and France are already typically the most-visited Schengen countries, especially among tourists and business travelers. In fact, in 2019, France processed nearly 24 percent of the nearly 17 million Schengen visa applications filed.

Types of Travel

Almost 53 percent of those surveyed said they’ll travel to Europe this year purely for tourism purposes, while less than eight percent said they’d be going for business reasons. Another 36 percent claimed their travels would be for “other” purposes, which might include medical treatment, long-term study, work and other reasons.

Gent Ukëhajdaraj, Head of Research and Statistics at SchengenVisaInfo.com, offered a few possible explanations for the vast discrepancy. Firstly, many businesses are still attempting to recover from the impact of a prolonged shutdown, while others have lately adapted to more efficient and cheaper means of connection, including virtual meetings and online conferences.

But, mainly, he said that the high percentage of potential tourists can be attributed to the fact that travelers are eager to use their postponed travel reservations. “Amid the virus outbreak in Europe, many travelers attempted to cancel their flights, hotel, and other reservations and get their money back. The majority of them were offered with a partial reimbursement or a postponing of their trip for a later date. Clearly many chose the second, as they did not wish to lose any money,” he said.

For more information, visit schengenvisainfo.com.