A new analysis of Eurostat data, released by the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), highlights significant disparities in the relationship between residents and tourists across the European Union. The Southern Aegean region of Greece, encompassing islands like Santorini, Mykonos and Rhodes, experiences the most pronounced imbalance, registering an average of approximately 117 tourist overnight stays per resident in 2023. This metric, a standard indicator of tourism intensity, was used to compare 237 EU regions.
The Ionian Islands, including Corfu, followed with roughly 98 overnight stays per person. Italy’s Province of Bolzano-South Tyrol recorded 68, while the Croatian Adriatic Coast and the Balearic Islands registered 67 and 57 respectively. For comparison, the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with 18 overnight stays per resident, demonstrated the highest level of tourism intensity within Germany, placing it at 17th in the EU ranking.
In terms of absolute numbers, the Canary Islands proved to be the most visited destination within the EU, hosting approximately 95.6 million overnight stays in 2023, averaging around 262,000 people per island daily. Following the Canary Islands were the Croatian Adriatic Coast (87.3 million overnight stays), Catalonia (85.6 million), the Ile-de-France region surrounding Paris (85.2 million) and Andalusia in southern Spain (73.9 million). Upper Bavaria, including Munich, was the most visited region in Germany, with 41.6 million overnight stays, placing it at 14th within the EU.
Conversely, the regions exhibiting the lowest tourism intensity in 2023 were located in Poland (Masovia without Warsaw and Opole) and Romania (South-Muntenia and Northeast Romania), where the ratio was just under one overnight stay per resident.
Tourism remains a vital economic driver across the EU. In Greece, the hospitality sector contributed the largest share to gross value added in 2023, accounting for 7.1 percent. Spain (6.7 percent) and Croatia (6.4 percent) followed. Germany, however, registered the smallest proportion of gross value added from the hospitality sector within the EU, at 1.5 percent.