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City breaks across Europe are becoming increasingly popular and making a significant contribution to national tourism industries, according to new figures.

European Cities Marketing, an association that represents over 100 cities, tourist boards and convention bureaus, revealed that the continent's top city break destinations generated €540m (£426.5m) from tourism in 2006, €19.2m more than the previous year.

Demand for hotels increased substantially in a number of cities that are close to airline base airports, such as Cologne, Dublin, Tallinn, Tarragona and Zurich.

The city break, or urban tourism, industry is set to continue growing over the coming years as customers continue to take advantage of low-cost flights and habits in consumer travel and spending change.

Mark Walsh of Reed Travel Exhibitions, which will host the City Break show in Belgrade, Serbia on 9-10 June, said: 'The sheer size of the city break market is immense: city tourism nowadays accounts for almost 40% of the total European outbound trip volumes.

'Based on these facts approximately 20% of international tourism receipts are generated in European cities. This all underpins the buoyant market of this rapidly expanding industry.'

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