European exhibition major Kinepolis Group reports admissionsof 6.1 million across its 20 sites in five European territories.

The company has seen a 3.2% overall admissions improvementin the first quarter of 2006 over that of 2005 when 5.9 million tickets weresold.

Following territory trends Kinepolis sites in France(+13.3%) and Poland (+19.7%) provided the admissions hikes that counterbalanceddrops in those of Belgium (-3%), Spain (-5.5%) and Switzerland (-21.5%).

Despite this the group's two top performing sites againstlast year came in Spain (Kinepolis Granada +24.3%) and Belgium (Palace/Opera+24%). The site with the most admissions in the first quarter was KinepolisMadrid with 689,637 tickets sold, but this was still 7.5% down on the sameperiod of 2005.

Nevertheless with Easter falling this weekend in April andtherefore holidays around the day taking place in April as opposed to startingin March last year, the company considers the results "a positive trend."

Kinepolis operates nine sites in Belgium, six in France,three in Spain and one in each of Poland and Switzerland.