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Spain top destination for the British holidaymaker
According to figures from government's Office for National Statistics, Spain was the most popular destination for residents of the UK in 2002.
At 12.6m visits, numbers of British people visiting Spain were up 7 per cent on 2001, compared with the 11.7m - down 2 per cent - who visited second placed France.
Third in the table was the Republic of Ireland with 4m UK visitors, followed by the US with 3.7m.
The rest of the top ten, in descending order, was made up of Greece, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium.
In the opposite direction, the residents of the US remained top of the table with 3.7m visits to the UK, followed by France with 3m; Germany, 2.5m; the Republic of Ireland, 2.3m and the Netherlands with 1.4m.
The survey also shows that, in the last quarter of 2002, numbers of visits abroad by the British and by overseas residents to the UK both returned to levels similar to those in the same period of 2000.
The last quarter of 2001 showed a dramatic fall in visitor numbers in both directions, following the World Trade Center attacks.
>From December 2002 to February this year, the number of overseas residents visiting the UK rose by 7 per cent compared with the previous three months - from 6.1m to 6.5m - and during the same period an increase of 3 per cent - to 15.3m - was seen in the number of UK residents visiting abroad. Details: www.statistics.gov.uk