Zoover.com conducted the survey, asking users for their top holiday getaway in Europe. The survey generated a massive 14,000 responses, 44% of these voted for the Greek Islands as their number one - compared to Spain in second place with 17% of the votes - certainly a wide victory margin. The beautiful coastal islands of Croatia were in 3rd place with 16% of the vote.
The Greek holiday board will no doubt be extremely happy and proud of this result. They cite the variety of options on offer for tourists (Greece boasts over 3,000 different islands), the delicious local cuisine, along with the islands' natural beauty, as the key reasons why the Greek Islands took the top spot by such a large margin. The island of Samos was voted top in the individual stakes - with an average rating of 8.6 out of 10. I've not yet been to Samos but after this survey I have to say I am tempted to give it a visit now.
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| Samos, Greece |
The result is likely to be swayed fairly significantly by popularity - a much larger number of people have been to Greece and therefore a larger number of people will have voted for the islands as their number one. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of votes for tourists who have been to both Croatia and Greece, for example. I think a good proportion of people who have been to Croatia would have voted for it above Greece - from my experiences the islands there are unmatched anywhere else in Europe (that I have been). The country is still growing in popularity, with several European heavyweights such as Spain, Greece and Italy still commanding a much larger percentage of the UK holiday market. If the survey could avoid or absorb the bias in voting somehow to play out the contest on a more level playing field, to weight less visited destinations, it would be interesting to see a revised list of the top results. I think we would see some unexpected (and perhaps fairly unknown) results in the top 10.
The list does, however, certainly give some decent pointers for some of the best holiday destinations in Europe.