Hotel markets are large, international and unevenly distributed. In 2024, EU tourist accommodation exceeded 3 billion nights, while hotels and similar accommodation represented 62.8% of those nights. Recovery has also differed by guest origin, destination and property type, making regional context essential when interpreting hotel industry statistics.
Contents
- European accommodation demand
- EU market scale and accommodation mix
- International and domestic hotel demand
- Destinations and city concentration
- Capacity and establishment size
- Occupancy, output, employment and revenue
European accommodation demand
Eurostat’s Tourism statistics - annual results for the accommodation sector shows how strongly EU tourist accommodation expanded before the pandemic. Between 2009 and 2019, total tourist-accommodation nights grew 40%. International-guest nights increased 53% over the same period, while domestic-trip nights rose 30%. The stronger international increase highlights how important cross-border travel became to the region’s accommodation market.
The 2020 shock was severe: EU tourist-accommodation nights fell 51% compared with 2019. Demand then recovered in stages. Nights rose 29% in 2021 compared with 2020, followed by a 50% increase in 2022. Growth moderated to 6.8% in 2023 and 2.7% in 2024. Even with that slower pace, 2024 nights were 5.1% above the 2019 level.
Eurostat recorded 79 million additional tourist-accommodation nights in 2024 compared with 2023. This places the latest annual increase in perspective: the market was still growing, but the post-pandemic rebound had moved from rapid restoration toward more normal expansion.
The comparison below summarizes the available year-on-year changes. These are changes in EU tourist-accommodation nights, not a single hotel-only series.
| Period | Change in EU tourist-accommodation nights |
|---|---|
| 2020 vs. 2019 | -51% |
| 2021 vs. 2020 | +29% |
| 2022 vs. 2021 | +50% |
| 2023 vs. 2022 | +6.8% |
| 2024 vs. 2023 | +2.7% |
Source: Eurostat, Tourism statistics - annual results for the accommodation sector.
EU market scale and accommodation mix
EU tourist accommodation exceeded 3 billion nights for the first time in 2024. The market was concentrated in a small group of large tourism countries: Spain recorded 505 million tourist-accommodation nights, and Spain, Italy, France and Germany together accounted for more than six out of every ten EU tourist-accommodation nights.
The total market includes more than hotels. Hotels and similar accommodation represented 62.8% of EU tourist-accommodation nights in 2024. Holiday and other short-stay accommodation accounted for 23.7%, while camping grounds, recreational-vehicle parks and trailer parks represented 13.5%.
This mix matters when comparing hotel statistics with broader tourism statistics. A destination can have substantial accommodation demand without all of that demand appearing in hotel performance measures. Conversely, hotels dominate rented-accommodation nights in some markets. In 2024, hotels covered more than 90% of rented-accommodation nights in Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta.
Within the hotel and similar-accommodation category, nights increased 3.0% in 2024 compared with 2023. That hotel-category growth was slightly stronger than the 2.7% increase across all EU tourist-accommodation nights, which include short-stay accommodation and campsites.
International and domestic hotel demand
International guests accounted for 48.1% of EU tourist-accommodation nights in 2024. The balance was therefore close to an even split between international and domestic demand, although the proportions vary considerably by country and destination.
International demand had recovered particularly strongly by 2024. EU international-guest nights were 6.8% above 2019, while domestic-guest nights were 3.6% above 2019. Compared with 2023, international-guest nights increased 5.5%, but domestic-guest nights increased only 0.2%. The contrast suggests that the final phase of recovery was led more by cross-border visitors than by domestic travel.
Several country results illustrate that uneven pattern. Malta had the largest increase in international-guest nights among EU countries, at 15.2% in 2024 compared with 2023. Cyprus increased international-guest nights 14.8%. France recorded a 1.6% increase, and Croatia recorded a 0.8% increase. Ireland’s international-guest nights were nearly unchanged, down 0.1%.
Domestic demand moved differently in selected destinations. Cyprus recorded an 11.8% increase in domestic tourist-accommodation nights in 2024 compared with 2023. Croatia increased domestic nights 7.5%, while Ireland increased them 6.5%. These figures describe tourist-accommodation nights rather than hotel-only nights, so they should be read as destination demand indicators within the broader accommodation market.
For international travel guides, the main implication is that a destination’s accommodation performance depends on both visitor origin and market composition. A rise in total nights can conceal a much larger international increase alongside flat domestic demand, or the reverse.
Destinations and city concentration
Accommodation demand is also concentrated geographically within countries. Paris recorded about 74 million tourist-accommodation nights in 2024, the highest figure among EU cities in the Eurostat results. Rome recorded about 42 million, and Berlin about 30 million.
Capital-city concentration was especially pronounced in some national markets. Estonia’s capital accounted for 49.8% of the country’s tourist-accommodation nights in 2024. Hungary’s capital accounted for 34.5%. These shares show why national accommodation totals can mask a strong dependence on one urban destination.
The country and city figures are not interchangeable. Spain’s 505 million nights describe a national total, while Paris’s approximately 74 million nights describe a city total. The city numbers are also reported as “about” figures, so they are best used as rounded indicators of destination scale rather than as precision estimates.
Capacity and establishment size
EU tourist accommodation offered 29.7 million bed places in 2024. Capacity increased by 0.5 million bed places from 2023 to 2024. The sector comprised 681,000 establishments, an increase of 44,500 establishments over the same period.
Capacity and establishment growth did not necessarily come only from large hotel openings. The EU breakdown of hotels and similar establishments shows a substantial small-property presence. Establishments with fewer than 25 bedrooms represented 56.7% of the 2024 breakdown. Those with 25 to 99 bedrooms represented 34.3%, while establishments with at least 100 bedrooms represented 9.1%.
| Hotel or similar establishment size | Share of the EU breakdown, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Fewer than 25 bedrooms | 56.7% |
| 25–99 bedrooms | 34.3% |
| At least 100 bedrooms | 9.1% |
The categories sum to approximately 100% because the published shares are rounded. They describe the distribution by bedroom-count group, not the share of total bed places or nights. That distinction is important: a smaller share of large establishments can still account for a substantial share of rooms or occupied nights.
Italy had 5.5 million tourist-accommodation bed places in 2024, and France had 5.1 million. These were the largest country capacity figures provided here. They are capacity measures, not counts of hotel rooms alone, because Eurostat’s tourist-accommodation measure includes hotels and similar accommodation, holiday and other short-stay accommodation, and camping categories.
Eurostat notes that bed-place capacity can omit establishments below national collection thresholds. The figures should therefore be treated as official reported capacity within the source’s coverage rather than as a guaranteed census of every accommodation unit.
Occupancy, output, employment and revenue
The EU net occupancy rate of hotel and similar-accommodation bed places was 49% in 2024. Country results varied widely. Cyprus had the highest rate at 72%, followed by Malta at 66% and Spain at 62%. At the lower end of the supplied comparison, Czechia recorded 37%, Romania 35% and Slovakia 34%.
| Market | Hotel and similar-accommodation bed-place occupancy, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cyprus | 72% |
| Malta | 66% |
| Spain | 62% |
| EU | 49% |
| Czechia | 37% |
| Romania | 35% |
| Slovakia | 34% |
Occupancy is not the same as annual demand growth. It reflects the relationship between occupied bed places and available bed places over the measurement period. A market can add capacity and still post strong nights while showing a moderate occupancy rate; capacity, seasonality and demand mix all affect the result.
The United States provides a separate view of hotel-related economic activity. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that U.S. travel and tourism real output increased 21.0% in 2022 compared with 2021. Within that account, traveler-accommodation real output reached $213,951 million in chained 2017 dollars in 2022 and increased 13.0% from 2021. U.S. traveler accommodations supported 1.320 million direct tourism jobs in 2022.
These BEA output figures are real output measures in millions of chained 2017 dollars, not current-dollar hotel sales. They should not be added to European nights, occupancy rates or Canadian revenue figures.
Canada’s 2024 accommodation-services results use a different concept again. Statistics Canada reported C$35.9 billion in operating revenue for accommodation services in 2024. Hotels, motor hotels and motels generated C$30.0 billion of that operating revenue. These are Canadian current-dollar revenue figures, so they are not directly comparable with U.S. chained-dollar output.
Source: BEA, U.S. Travel and Tourism Satellite Account for 2018–2022; Statistics Canada, Accommodation services, 2024.
Eurostat hotel figures use the “hotels and similar accommodation” category within tourist-accommodation establishments. The sources cover different geographies, periods and concepts, so these statistics should be used as separate benchmarks rather than combined into a global hotel-industry total.