2024 was the best tourism year on record for the European Union, with the total number of nights spent in tourist accommodation exceeding three billion. This reflects an increase of 2.2% compared to 2023 (+65.4 million nights), after a final boost in the last quarter of the year, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office.
The data show a substantial increase of 67.2 million nights spent by international guests (+4.9%) in 2024, while nights spent by domestic guests decreased slightly (-0.1%; -1.8 million).
According to Eurostat, Spain (500 million), Italy (458 million), France (451 million) and Germany (441 million) recorded the highest number of nights spent in tourist accommodation, accounting for 61.6% of all nights spent in the EU. Luxembourg (3.4 million), Latvia (4.7 million) and Estonia (6.6 million) recorded the lowest number of nights.
Compared to 2023 in 2024, tourism nights increased the most in Malta (+14.4%) and Latvia (+7.4%), while they decreased only in Luxembourg (-2.7%), France (-0.6%), Belgium (-0.2%) and Sweden (-0.1%).
The last quarter of 2024 was responsible for the increase in annual results, with a 5.1% increase in total nights spent in the EU compared to Q4 2023, Eurostat also writes.
Tourism nights increased in all EU countries in Q4 2024, compared to the same quarter in 2023, except in Ireland, where they decreased slightly (-1.8%). Among the other EU countries, the highest quarterly increases were recorded in Malta (+16.5%), Latvia (+12.5%), Italy (+11.1%) and Croatia (+10.2%).