Tourism in Denmark

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Tourism in Denmark" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Tourism in Denmark is a growing industry and a major economic contributor: tourists spent a total of DKK 128 billion and the tourism industry employed 161,999 people in full time positions in 2017.^[1]

In 2018, tourists from Denmark's neighboring countries, Germany, Norway, and Sweden, comprised the majority of foreign tourists. That year also saw 30 million international arrivals. The number of overnight visitors has been slightly increasing since 2014; in 2018, 16.6 million tourists stayed overnight.^[1]

Denmark has long stretches of sandy beaches, attracting many tourists in the summer, with Germany accounting for most foreign visitors. Swedish and Norwegian tourists often come to visit the relatively lively city of Copenhagen, while many young Scandinavians come for Denmark's comparably cheap and readily accessible beer, wines and spirits.^{[citation needed]}

As Europe's oldest kingdom and the home of Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark is often marketed as a "fairytale country".^[2] The term is so ingrained, that it is still used in international news reports, especially when the news is of a nature contradicting the image, such as the Copenhagen riots or the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.^{[citation needed]}

Denmark has a relatively large outbound tourism, with Spain as primary destination, accounting for 14% of all overnight stays abroad of four days or more in 2013. Turkey ranks as the primary destination outside of Europe at 7%.^[3][4]