EU tourism tops 3 billion nights in 2024 after strong Q4

2024 was the best tourism year on record for the EU, with the total number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments  exceeding 3 billion. This reflects a 2.2% increase compared with 2023 (+65.4 million nights), following a final boost in the last quarter of the year. 

Data show a substantial increase of 67.2 million nights spent by international guests (+4.9%) in 2024, while nights spent by domestic guests slightly decreased (-0.1%; -1.8 million). 

Spain (500 million), Italy (458 million), France (451 million) and Germany (441 million) registered the highest number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, representing 61.6% of the total nights spent in the EU. Luxembourg (3.4 million), Latvia (4.7 million) and Estonia (6.6 million) registered the lowest number of nights. 

This information comes from monthly data on tourism published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments.

Source dataset: tour_occ_nim

Compared with 2023, in 2024, tourism nights rose the most in Malta (+14.4%) and Latvia (+7.4%). On the other hand, they decreased only in Luxembourg (-2.7%), France (-0.6%), Belgium (-0.2%) and Sweden (-0.1%). 

Robust Q4 2024: tourism nights up in almost all EU countries

The last quarter of 2024 was responsible for the soaring yearly results, with a 5.1% increase in the total nights spent in the EU compared with Q4 2023. 

Tourism nights increased in all EU countries in Q4 2024 compared with the same quarter of 2023, except in Ireland where it decreased slightly (-1.8%). Among the other EU countries, the highest quarterly increases were registered in Malta (+16.5%), Latvia (+12.5%), Italy (+11.1%) and Croatia (+10.2%). 

Source dataset: tour_occ_nim