Greece Among Leading EU Countries with Most Tourist Beds in 2022

Greece is one of the countries in the European Union with the highest number of bed places in tourism accommodation in 2022 with the EU marking an overall increase of tourist bed places last year, found data released this week by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical authority.

More specifically, Greece accounted for 4 percent of the EU total of bed places last year demonstrating a strong rebound in accommodation offer. The country ranked in the Top 10 countries in Europe with the highest number of tourist beds in 2021 also.

Overall last year, the EU had an estimated total of 28.9 million bed places on offer across some 620,000 tourist accommodation facilities up from 28.1 million in 2021 reflecting a complete recovery in terms of tourism accommodation supply in 2022.

Source: Eurostat.

The Top 3 countries accounting for the bulk of bed places in the EU were Italy (18 percent) with 5.2 million beds, France (18 percent, 5.1 million) and Spain (13 percent, 3.8 million beds), followed by Germany (12 percent), Netherlands (5 percent), Greece, Croatia, and Austria (4 percent), and Sweden, Czechia, and Poland (3 percent).

Indicatively, the number of bed places rose by 3 percent (+765,900) and hospitality facilities by 4 percent (+24,400) compared to 2020 and by 1 percent (+150,400) and 1 percent (3,600) over pre-Covid 2019.

According to Eurostat data, travelers from EU countries continue to fuel intra-EU tourism. In total in 2022, almost 2.8 billion nights were spent at EU tourist accommodation establishments: approximately 1.6 billion by domestic tourists and 1.2 billion by international guests of which 65 percent were by tourists from EU countries.

Source: Eurostat.

Last year, 6 percent of international nights spent at EU accommodation facilities were spent by travelers from North America (+2.4 pp over 2021), Asia (4 percent, +1 pp), Central and South America (2 percent, +0.8 pp), Africa (1 percent) and Oceania (0.5 percent, +0.3 pp).

Data goes on to indicate that between 2022 and 2021, intra-EU tourism decreased and the number of travelers from other regions increased. Indicatively, in 2021, only 8 percent of nights spent were by travelers from non-European regions. This figure increased in 2022 to 13 percent.