EU tourism nights in the first quarter of 2025

In the first quarter of 2025, there were 452.4 million overnight stays in tourist accommodations across the EU, marking a slight decline of 0.2% compared with the same quarter of 2024. January recorded 139.0 million nights (+3.5% compared with January 2024), February 147.7 million (-0.8%) and March 167.7 million (-2.7%).

This information comes from monthly data on tourist accommodation up to March 2025 published by Eurostat. This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

The slight decreases in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the first quarter of 2024 can be attributed to holidays falling differently in the calendar year, causing a shift from February to March (school holidays around carnival) and – more significantly – from March to April (Easter).

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Source dataset: tour_occ_nim

Foreign visitors accounted for approximately 45.6% of all overnight stays in the first 3 months of 2025, with large differences among EU countries. The biggest share of foreign overnight stays at this period was recorded in Malta (91.2%), Cyprus (85.7%) and Luxembourg (80.4%).

By contrast, foreign guests accounted for only one-fifth of overnight stays in Poland (18.6%), Romania and Germany (20.1% and 20.2%, respectively).

In the first quarter of 2025, there was a small increase in nights spent by foreign visitors (+1.1% compared with the first quarter of 2024), while for domestic nights, a slight decline (-1.3%) was recorded. The largest increases in overnight stays by foreign visitors were recorded in Latvia (+18.5%), Malta (+17.2%) and Finland (+10.6%). At the other end of the range, the biggest drops of foreign visitors were recorded in Ireland (-23.1%), Croatia (-16.7%) and Sweden (-11.5%).

For more information

• Statistics Explained article on nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments
• Thematic section on tourism
• Database on tourism
• Webinar on tourism statistics

Methodological notes

• 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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