Since tourism is gaining in importance for the whole national economy advance planning is more and more necessary. The survey should serve as a basis for upcoming measures and enable the analysis of the bygone year as well as a comparison with previous surveys. To make the comparison possible, a large part of the questions remained the same as those from the years 1996 and 1998. Similar to the special program from December 1996 and 1998 the survey was conducted according to the EU-standards for surveys on statistical data in the field of tourism. However, in contrast to the previous year, this survey is conducted with the whole sample to provide detailed regional results on a stately level in the tradition 3-year rhythm.