A new report published by Eurostat reveals that in 2023, the number of people travelling abroad for tourism had fully recovered from the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, with restrictions lifted for all destinations. The threee EU regions at level 2 of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 2) with the highest number of nights spent by foreign tourists were the Canarias (83.2 million) and Balearics (61.7 million) and the Croatian coastal region of Jadranska Hrvatska (80.8 million). These three regions account for 16.4% of the total nights spent by foreigners in the EU.
Besides these three, the top 10 regions with the highest values included the Spanish regions of Cataluña and Andalucia, two island regions of Greece (Notio Aigaio, Kriti), the French capital region of Ile-de-France, Veneto in Italy and Tirol in Austria, respectively. The top 10 tourist destinations represent more than one-third (37.6%) of the foreign nights spent in the EU in 2023.
In 58 regions out of 231 for which data are available the number of nights spent by foreign tourists was higher than that recorded for domestic tourists. The relative importance of foreign tourists was particularly high in 7 popular holiday destinations that accounted for more than 9 out of every 10 nights spent in tourist accommodation: the Greek island regions of Kriti (94.6%), Ionia Nisia (93.6%) and Notio Aigaio (92.0%), Malta (93.1%), Jadranska Hrvatska (92.5%), Cyprus (90.8%) and Tirol (90.7%).
However, among all EU countries, Greece is suffering the highest pressure from tourism, with six out of ten locations on the list of most overcrowded. And, 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.