The European Union’s all-important tourism industry appears to have fully recovered from pandemic-related repercussions, as Eurostat last week announced that the number of overnight stays in the Union in 2023 had exceeded 2.92 billion.
This is 1.6% higher than the pre-pandemic figure of 2.87 billion overnight stays and is the highest recorded to date.
The figures for 2023 are also higher, by 171 million stays, compared to 2022, a 6.3% increase.
Eurostat’s numbers are tallied from the Jan-Oct 2023 period, while the figures for some countries also include visitors in November 2023.
Greece is one of eight EU countries where the year-on-year increase in overnight stays exceeded 10%. The others were Slovakia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Austria, Czechia, Portugal and Romania.
The biggest rise in overnight stays in the EU was posted by Germany, with an additional 32.8 million recorded, followed closely by Spain, with an additional 32.3 million stays.