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2m head away for Easter
Wednesday March 31, 2010 - Email this article to a friend
It's the last hurrah for the ski season, though many people are heading for the beach and on city breaks. Shame really as there's still plenty of skiing left in The Alps and April is a great month to ski.
More than two million people are set to travel this weekend.
Spain is the most popular country to escape to and the Canary Islands the favourite, according to figures released by ABTA and released by the travel web site, Travel Mole.
Geneva is the most popular ski gateway airport as it gives access to many of the most popular resorts in Switzerland and France; Val d'Isere, La Plagne, Tignes, Avoriaz and Val Thornes are the high altitude French resorts that use Geneva.
While Verbier and Zermatt in Switzerland are also popular at this time of year.
PlanetSKI will be in Verbier and we'll bring you a report over the Easter break.
For those wanting sun and beaches Egypt,Tunisia, Turkey and Florida seem to have come out on top.
Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Milan and New York are the top five city break destinations.
London, Edinburgh and Manchester leading the way for city breaks in the UK.
Gatwick expects to be busyABTA estimates 575,000 will leave from Heathrow, 250,000 from Gatwick, 175,000 from Stansted and 60,000 from Luton. A further 15,000 will depart from Southampton.
More than 155,000 will be leaving via Scottish airports with 58,000 from Glasgow, 75,000 from Edinburgh and 23,000 from Aberdeen.
From the north and the Midlands, 141,000 will leave from Manchester and 60,000 from Birmingham.
The Channel Tunnel tooOther regional airports and ferry terminals will also be "extremely busy" over the weekend and Eurostar is reporting 85,000 leaving though The Channel Tunnel.
"Easter is the traditional curtain raiser to the summer and I am delighted to see that hundreds of thousands of our customers are taking the opportunity to take a well earned break both here in the UK and overseas," says the ABTA chairman, John McEwan.
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