Danish travel activities: do we travel more and longer – and to what extent?

Two separate Danish National travel surveys are analysed to outline the amount and extent of national and international travelling during the latest 15-20 years; the national travel survey (TU) describes mainly national daily travel activities, whereas the holiday and business travel survey describes national and international travel activities including overnight stay(s).
When sampling only respondents with trips above 100 kilometres, they only accounts for around 2% of all daily travel activities, however, this share appears to increase and suggest in general that we do travel longer. But due to this limited share of trips, the overall impacts of longer distance travelling vanish when considering all daily travel activities. Especially as about 95% of all daily travel destinations range less than 50 kilometres away and in total induce an average trip length of 20 kilometres. If focus is on travelled kilometres however, the limited share of longer distance trips increases in magnitude, nevertheless the growth in international travel activities is still more compelling.
During the latest 15 years it appears that Danes in general travel more for holiday purposes. And looking more into details it appears that the growth is in general found within international travel, mainly aviation, and to a large extend holidays below one week’s duration. But this growth is only partly at the expense of national holidays, not as such at the expense of car travelling, nor at the expense of longer duration holidays. The majority of international travel is within Europe, but increasing travelling outside Europe is furthermore emerging.
In total these trends implies that Danes do travel more and longer, which is related to a general increase in travelling within the whole population, but also more holidays per person.