LUXEMBOURG / RankWire.AI / – Tourist overnight stays within the European Union reached a total of 1.321 billion during the initial six months of 2026, marking a 1.7% increase from the 1.299 billion nights logged in the same period of 2025. The Eurostat data, covering the nights spent from January through June across the bloc’s 27 member states, encompass both domestic and international travelers’ stays at commercial tourist accommodation facilities.
Ireland experienced the most significant growth among EU nations, with overnight stays climbing by 14.6% compared to the previous year. Malta followed with a 9.9% rise, while Slovakia saw a 5.9% increase. Conversely, nine countries reported a decline in overnight stays during this half-year period, with Cyprus experiencing the sharpest drop at 7.7%, and Romania seeing a 6.7% decrease. It is important to note that these figures reflect nights spent rather than visitor arrivals, tourism income, or travel expenditures.
International visitors accounted for 48.9% of all tourism nights recorded in the EU during the first half of 2026. Malta led with the highest proportion of foreign overnight stays, constituting 95.2% of its total. Cyprus followed at 92.6%, with Luxembourg reporting an 87.7% share. These statistics include non-resident guests from other EU countries as well as visitors from outside the bloc, while domestic tourists made up the remaining portion of overnight stays throughout the EU.
International tourism shows stronger growth in overnight stays
The number of nights spent by international travelers increased by 2.5% when compared to the first half of 2025, whereas nights by domestic visitors grew by only 0.9% over the same period, indicating that foreign visitor overnight stays expanded at nearly three times the rate of domestic tourism. Foreign tourists now account for almost half of all recorded nights in the EU, with these figures demonstrating the separate contributions of resident and non-resident travel to the overall 1.7% rise in accommodation nights.
In several significant domestic tourism markets, international overnight stays represented a relatively small share of total accommodation demand. For example, Germany’s international visitor share was 18.5% during the first six months of 2026, Poland reported 19.8%, and Romania stood at 23.0%. Each of these countries experienced less than a quarter of their total recorded tourism nights from non-resident visitors, underscoring notable variation in the composition of accommodation demand among individual EU member states.
Statistics include hotel and short-term lodging stays
The data on tourism accommodation encompasses hotels and similar facilities, holiday rentals, and other forms of short-term lodging, such as camping sites, recreational vehicle parks, and trailer parks. According to Eurostat, an overnight stay is defined as each night a guest spends at a tourist accommodation establishment. The first-half figures exclude nights spent in non-rented accommodations. This standardized measurement approach enables national data to be aggregated, providing a comprehensive overview of tourism accommodation across the EU.
Earlier data from the first quarter showed 471.1 million nights spent in tourism accommodations within the EU, representing a 3.4% increase from the same period in 2025. January accounted for 143.5 million nights, up 3.2%, February recorded 154.4 million nights, an increase of 3.4%, and March saw 173.2 million nights, reflecting a 3.7% growth. Extending this to include the first half of 2026, the total number of nights reached 1.321 billion, covering the period through June.