In 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the tourism sector, guests spent more than 554 million nights in the EU in accommodation booked via Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group or Tripadvisor. This means that on an average day, around 1.5 million guests slept in a bed booked through one of these four platforms.
As a first result of a landmark agreement between the European Commission and the four private collaborative economy platforms, Eurostat published today the very first information on short-stay accommodation offered via these platforms. Unlike the traditional official accommodation statistics collected via business surveys or via local authorities, the data are collected using a previously unexplored channel, namely data on listings and bookings of these platforms.
This first release covers national, regional and city-level data on the number of stays booked and the number of nights spent in 2018 and 2019 in accommodation booked via Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor. Data for 2020 will be available after this summer and data for the first months of 2021 will be released in autumn. In the course of 2021, more detailed data will become available as well.
This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.
One in eight guest nights spent in Andalusia, Adriatic Croatia or Catalonia
In 2019, the most popular destinations in the EU for tourists booking their accommodation through one of the four platforms were Spain (112 million guest nights), France (109 million), Italy (83 million), Germany (40 million) and Portugal (33 million).
The top city destinations were the urban areas of Paris (15.1 million guest nights, or more than 41 000 guests on an average night), Barcelona (11.3 million), Rome (10.4 million), Lisbon (10.5 million) and Madrid (8.3 million).
The 20 most popular regions in the EU account for nearly half (48%) of the total number of guest nights booked via the platforms. Most of these top 20 regions are in Spain (six regions), France or Italy (five each). Two regions are in Portugal, while Croatia and Hungary each have one region in the top 20.
In the three most popular EU regions, guests booked more than 20 million nights in 2019: Andalusia (26 million) in Spain, Adriatic Croatia (25 million) and Catalonia (21 million) in Spain. In 2019, these three regions accounted for 13% of the guest nights spent in the EU that were booked via the platforms.
For more information:
- European Commission Press Release
- Eurostat Statistics Explained article on short-stay accommodation offered via online collaborative economy platforms
- Eurostat ‘Experimental statistics’ section dedicated to short-stay accommodation offered via online collaborative economy platforms
To contact us, please visit our User Support page.
For press queries, please contact our Media Support.