Trips and holidays (2016)

Trips and holidays is a quarterly focus included into the Households Budget Survey from 2014 with the aim of collecting information on tourist flows of residents. It provides a wide set of information on tourist trips, such as the amount and the characteristics of trips made for personal and business reasons, both in Italy and abroad, the amount of expenditure, the reasons for not participating in tourism, the amount of same-day visits. These information was previously collected by quarterly Trips, holidays and daily life carried out by Istat from 1997 to 2013. The estimates provided are internationally comparable and allow to analyse the evolution of the tourist behaviours of individuals. Tourism is defined as the set of activities and services concerning people moving outside their 'usual environment', for holidays or work purposes. Therefore, all non-routine journeys are included in the tourist flows, with overnight stays (trips) or without (excursions, daily trips). The identification of the usual environment of a person makes it possible to correctly distinguish the tourist phenomenon from mobility, which does not included within the field of observation of tourist demand. Tourism flows are distinguished into trips for personal reasons and business trips, the first ones differentiated between short holiday (1-3 overnight stays) and long holiday trips (4 or more overnight stays). The holidays include trips for leisure, pleasure, relax, visiting to relatives or friends, for health treatments or for religious reasons. Istat provide three different datasets: individuals (individui), trips (viaggi) and excursions (escursioni). The annual files are obtained by combining the four quarterly files built through the survey. The "individuals" file consists of a record for each individual member of the interviewed family, thus including both individuals who have traveled (tourists) and those who have not traveled. The "trips" file consists of a record for each journey made by an individual. The classification of journeys makes it possible to distinguish business trips from holiday trips. The survey detects the trips that end in each reference month, regardless of the start date. The "excursions" file consists of a record for each excursion carried out by an individual in the reference month.