The downside of the global recession has shown many of its unattractive faces thus far.  One of the most obvious has been the major reduction in consumer spending across the board and for this same reason, Europe’s most popular tourist hotspots have endured a summer with dramatic drops in bookings.

The French government had previously predicted that the number of international overnights stays would fall by almost 30% for July and August.  This is a huge decrease, especially taking in to account that France is thought to be the most popular tourist destination in the world.

Matters more relating to home; Spain’s Trade, Industry and Tourism Ministry have released figures claiming that there was a decrease of foreign tourists by 10% (year-on-year) in June and 6.1% in July.

With the two largest tourist groups in Europe, namely the UK and Germany, significantly suffering some of the most dramatic aftereffects of the downturn, these figures should not be a shock to anyone.

It should therefore be of no surprise then that the amount of Brits flocking to their favourite holiday spots dipped by 16.2% for the first 7 months of the year; another clear indication that Britain itself is also crawling out of the recession.The Ministry also stated that 6.6 million visitors arrived in July, this historically being the second most popular month of the year.

However, not everyone was displeased with its tourist figures this year.  Turkey’s Tourism Ministry was not surprisingly pleased to be able to announce an impressive rise in numbers of foreign tourists visiting their country.  Their figures were up by 6.32% (year-on-year) in July this year, bringing their number of visitors to 4.34 million.