ROME, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Italians are set to spend a total of 4.7 billion euros (over five billion U.S. dollars) on their Christmas and New Year's Eve meals this year, up 100 million euros from the same holiday season in 2018, according to a report issued on Friday.
They will spend 2.7 billion euros on the traditional family Christmas meal and another two billion euros on the New Year's Eve banquet, the report of Confederation of Italian Cooperatives (Confcooperative) claimed.
Nine out of ten Italians plan to spend Christmas at home, in line with 2018 data, and five in ten say they will travel or ring in the New Year at friends' homes, the report said.
Meanwhile, the Italian hotel federation, Federalberghi, projected a higher number of Italians -- 18.3 million -- will get on the road during the holiday season, up almost 10 percent over last year, generating turnover of over 13 billion euros.
In a recent report, Federalberghi said that almost 90 percent of these travelers will remain in Italy (up from almost 88 percent last year).
Italy has about 60 million inhabitants, according to ISTAT, the national statistics bureau.
