Person with a carry-on luggage in a room.

In the second quarter of 2024, there were 780.1 million overnight stays in tourist accommodations across the EU, a slight increase of 0.2% compared with the same quarter of 2023. April recorded 193.6 million nights (-8.7% compared with April 2023), May 272.1 million (+7.9%) and June 314.5 million (-0.1%). Note that Easter fell in March in 2024 whereas in 2023 that popular tourism weekend was in April. 

Foreign visitors (non-residents of the country, EU and non-EU) accounted for approximately half (49.0%) of all overnight stays in the second quarter of 2024, with large differences among EU countries. The biggest share of foreign overnight stays at the beginning of the year was recorded in Cyprus (94.8%), Malta (94.7%) and Croatia (91.0%).

This article marks World Tourism Day celebrated on 27 September.

Overnight stays by guests from a foreign country, April-June, 2024. Bar chart - Click to see full dataset below

Source dataset: tour_occ_nim

In contrast, foreign guests accounted for less than one-fifth of overnight stays in Poland (18.2%), Germany (18.7%) and Romania (19.6%).

The rise in nights spent by foreign visitors in the second quarter of 2024 (+3.1% compared with the second quarter of 2023) was much more pronounced than the fall in domestic nights (-2.5%). The largest increases in overnight stays by foreign visitors were recorded in Luxembourg (+23.8%), Malta (+13.3%) and Romania (+10.5%). At the other end of the range, the Netherlands (-5.7%), Austria (-4.3%) and Belgium (-1.9%) experienced the biggest decline.

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Methodological notes

  • Ireland: Data not available.
  • Nights spent: a night spent (or overnight stay) is each night a guest/tourist (resident or non-resident) actually spends (sleeps or stays) in a tourist accommodation establishment or non-rented accommodation. This article focuses only on nights spent in tourist accommodation establishment, while non-rented accommodation is out of the scope of this release.
  • Tourism accommodation establishments are classified and described in groups according to the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) Rev. 2 classification as follows:
    • I551 (hotels and similar accommodation)
    • I552 (holiday and other short-stay accommodation)
    • I553 (camping grounds, recreational vehicle parks and trailer parks)

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