46. Considers, in view of the decline in health tourism, that there is a need for the adoption of a specific Community directive to define the recognition and use of hydro-thermal resorts and, more generally, the role of health tourism and thermal cures in connection with tourist facilities in the various Member States – apart from the health, social security and insurance aspects – by also making available sufficient financial resources to enable a strategically important sector of the Member States" economy to embark on a suitable development process, so as to significantly ...[+++] increase new direct and indirect employment;

46. Considers, in view of the decline in health tourism, that there is a need for the adoption of a specific Community directive to define the recognition and use of hydro-thermal resorts and, more generally, the role of health tourism and thermal cures in connection with tourist facilities in the various Member States – apart from the health, social security and insurance aspects – by also making available sufficient financial resources to enable a strategically important sector of the Member States" economy to embark on a suitable development process, so as to significantly ...[+++] increase new direct and indirect employment;

Although many sectors will therefore have suffered from the present continual rain, it may well be that the wellness sector, spas, and urban tourism have benefited from the bad weather.

To treat Europe as a single tourist destination makes no sense: even within a single State, tourism tends to be devolved to the regional and local level and competition extends down to the level of individual resorts.

24. Encourages the Commission and the Member States to gather and to group together suggestions put forward by the tourist industry which are intended to facilitate tourism for organised social groups, to encourage new forms of tourism in new localities and in particular to encourage Europeans living in Europe itself to visit European destinations in the outlying parts of the EU, to explore the potential for employment through sport-related tourism and to offset seasonal fluctuations in tourist numbers with a view to creating stable e ...[+++]mployment throughout the year, in particular in declining seaside resorts;

(c) reference material supplied to accredited representatives or correspondents appointed by official national tourist agencies and not intended for distribution, viz. yearbooks, lists of telephone or telex numbers, hotel lists, fairs catalogues, specimens of craft goods of negligible value, and literature on museums, universities, spas or other similar establishments.