36.8 per cent of Maltese are unable to afford paying for a one week holiday away from home every year, according to figures taken in 2016, published this week by Eurostat.

Although the number seems considerably large, the situation has improved drastically since 2010, where it was reported that 60.8 per cent could not afford it, meaning that between 2010 and 2016 the number decreased by 24 per cent.

The research report, titled ‘inability to afford paying for one week holiday away from home’ was taken by the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC).

The statistic is more or less in line with the EU average, a total of 32.9 per cent of the population cannot afford a one-week annual holiday away from home.

Sweden registered the lowest statistic with only 8.2 per cent of the population not being able to afford the vacation, followed by Luxembourg and Denmark. On the other side of the scale, citizens of Romania displayed the highest percentage with 66.6%, followed by Croatia at 62.8%.

As the cost of travel becomes cheaper, at EU level, the amount of people who could not afford the one-week annual holiday away from home decrease by 5.1 per cent since 2011, from 38.0% to 32.9%.