EU: Overnight Stays in Tourist Accommodation Approach Pre-pandemic Levels

The total number of nights spent in tourist accommodation (hotels, rooms to let, camping grounds, etc) in 2022 was close to the pre-pandemic level, Eurostat said on Wednesday.

More specifically, in 2022 the total number of overnight stays in tourist accommodation was estimated at 2.72 billion, compared to 2.88 billion in 2019 – a decrease of only 5.6 percent.

According to the data, this represents substantial increases compared with the number of nights spent in 2020 and 2021: 1.42 billion in 2020, 1.83 billion in 2021 (a rise of 91.1 percent and 48.3 percent in 2022, respectively).

The EU’s statistical office points out that in the course of 2022, monthly tourism figures increased continuously and finally approached the levels of the corresponding months in 2019.

“Compared with the pre-summer first half year of 2019 (January–June), in the same period of 2022, nights spent in tourist accommodation were down by 11 percent. Meanwhile, the period July-December closely mirrored 2019 levels of nights spent (-1.9 percent).”

The data comes from early estimates on tourism published by Eurostat and which are based on monthly January-October or November data, depending on each respective country.

Nights spent by international guests

Data for 2022 also show that nights spent by international guests have neared 2019 levels (1.19 billion nights in 2022 compared with 1.36 billion in 2019, just 12.6 percent shy of pre-pandemic levels.

This represents a strong increase compared with the number of nights spent by foreign tourists in 2020 and in 2021: 412.5 million nights in 2020 and 587.8 million in 2021 (a rise of 188.8 percent and 102.6 percent in 2022, respectively).

Domestic travel

Regarding domestic travel, 2022 data show a record number of 1.53 billion nights spent, an increase of 10.9 million compared with 2019 (+0.7 percent).

Among the EU countries, the number of nights spent by domestic and foreign tourists in 2022 compared with 2019 increased in three of the Member States with available data: Denmark (38.4 million nights in 2022 compared with 34.3 million in 2019 – a 12.3 percent rise), the Netherlands (128.3 million compared with 123.4 million – up by 3.9 percent) and Belgium (42.7 million compared with 42.5 million – a 0.5 percent rise).

Meanwhile, other countries have not yet fully recovered from the pandemic’s impact on tourism. This was particularly the case in Latvia (3.9 million in 2022 compared with 5.5 million in 2019 – a drop of 29.6 percent) and Slovakia (12.3 million compared with 17.2 million – down by 28.3 percent).