Lex localis - Journal of Local Self-Government_11(1)_January

360 L EX LOCALIS - J OURNAL OF L OCAL S ELF -G OVERNMENT J. Mekinc, R. Mawby & A. Trnavčevič: Security and Tourism in European Cities - The Multiple Case Study 1 Introduction Europe is the world's number one tourist destination. rom the supply perspective, it is estimated that there were just over 570 thousand tourist accommodation establishments active within the EU-28 in 2014 and that together they provided nearly 31 million bed places . During recent years, the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation within the EU_28 establishments has generally shown an upward trend (see Figure 1). Figure 1: Number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, EU-28, 2004–14 (¹) (billion nights spent by residents and non- residents) (Eurostat, 2015) According to the Eurostat, there was a short-lived downturn in the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments in 2008 and 2009 as a consequence of the financial and economic crisis: the number of tourism nights in the EU-28 fell by 0.6 % in 2008 and by a further 2.1 % in 2009. In 2010, however, the number of nights spent increased by 4.7 % and this positive development continued, with growth of 3.3 % in 2011, 4.3 % in 2012 and 2.1 % in 2013. In 2014, the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments in the EU-28 reached a peak of 2.7 billion nights, up by 1.8 % compared with 2013. Thanks to these results, tourism has been a major contributor to the European economic recovery. Europe is also the preferred tourist destination for Europeans