The EU tourism sector seems to be recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, Eurostat reported last week. The total number of nights spent in tourist accommodation in 2022 was close to the pre-pandemic level with 2.72 billion nights in 2022 compared to 2.88 billion in 2019, or -5.6%. This represents a “substantial” improvement over the 2020 and 2021 levels (1.42 billion in 2020, 1.83 billion in 2021; +91.1% and +48.3% in 2022, respectively).
Over the course of 2022, monthly numbers of European tourism have steadily increased and have finally approached the levels of the corresponding months in 2019. In the first pre-summer half of 2022 (January-June), overnight stays in tourist accommodations were down 11% compared to the same period in 2019. The July-December 2022 period, meanwhile, was even closer to 2019 levels with a decline of only -1.9%.
Nights spent by non-EU tourists were close to the 2019 levels (1.19 billion nights in 2022 versus 1.36 billion in 2019, or -12.6%). The increase is strong compared to 2020 and 2021 (412.5 million nights in 2020 and 587.8 million in 2021, or +188.8% and +102.6% in 2022, respectively).
For domestic travel, 2022 data show a record 1.53 billion overnight stays, an increase of 10.9 million over 2019 (+0.7%).
Among the EU countries, the number of nights spent by domestic and foreign tourists in 2022 compared to 2019 has increased in three of the Member States for which data are available: Denmark (38.4 million nights in 2022 compared to 34.3 million in 2019; +12.3%), the Netherlands (128.3 million compared to 123.4 million; +3.9%) and Belgium (42.7 million compared to 42.5 million; +0.5%).
Other countries have not yet fully recovered from the impact of the pandemic on tourism, such as Latvia (3.9 million in 2022 vs. 5.5 million in 2019; -29.6%) and Slovakia (12.3 million vs. 17.2 million; -28.3%).
