Platform tourism on increase across Europe
Some cities are pushing back
Every minute, an average of 162 stays are booked on the short-term rental market across Europe. This average figure is revealed by the latest data from Eurostat on collaborative economy platforms across the EU and EFTA countries. The data covers short-term rentals, such as apartments, booked through the three major providers — Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group — and excludes more traditional forms of accommodation, such as hotels and campsites.
The datasets released on 2 July show the latest trends in platform-based tourism across European countries, cities, and regions.
- Online platforms facilitated almost one billion nights of tourist accommodation in 2025. On average, this equates to 2.61 million people staying for one night (or approximately one million people staying for 2.6 nights) each day.
- After a significant decline during the pandemic, platform tourism not only recovered but also surpassed pre-pandemic levels. This growth continued in 2025, albeit at a slower pace than the previous year.
- In 2025, 952 million nights were booked via platforms — a 11.4 percent increase on 2024.
How data on tourism is gathered
The Eurostat release includes so-called ‘experimental statistics’: data collection on short-term rentals booked via online platforms. The data is shared with Eurostat “on a voluntary basis” by three major online collaborative economy platforms – Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia Group. Notably, 2025 is the first reference year reflecting data from 3 platforms, rather than 4, following Tripadvisor’s public exit from this line of business in late 2024. The exit does not influence the data comparability over the years.
According to the methodology, the data provided includes bookings in the category “holiday and other short-stay accommodation”, hence do not include hotels according to the Eurostat categorization (the precise definition of hotels is: “furnished short-stay accommodation with daily cleaning, bed-making, food and beverage services” ).
The data on “guest nights spent” show the number of nights booked counting the number of people staying. For example, if a family of four stays in a place for two nights, it counts as eight nights. This gives a rough estimate of the number of visitors.
The data is published by Eurostat on the level of the country, NUTS2 regions, NUTS3 regions, and the City level (as classified in Urban Audit). The listings are supplied by platforms on the level of LAUs (local administrative units) and Eurostat then aggregates them depending on the geographical classification system. It is important to note that the City data follow different classification and is not a subdivision of the regional NUTS.
For Eurostat it is important to add data on this type of tourism to get a fuller picture, as the institution claims. This type of tourism is hard to cover through traditional surveys. Hosts are often very small businesses or private landlords. Traditional surveys in some EU countries count only places with a bigger number of beds — excluding almost all typical short-term rentals. Even in countries without such a threshold, the coverage is likely limited. Hence, according to Eurostat the project is vital in closing an existing data gap. The data was for the first time collected for the year 2018.
Is this continuous growth since the pandemic era due to the increased popularity of short-term rentals, or are people simply travelling more in general? Eurostat’s data on hotel accommodation also reveals an overall increase. However, this increase is much lower than the increase in bookings via platforms. Eurostat warns that the platform tourism data should not be added to the classic hotel tourism data because some types of accommodation might overlap. Nevertheless, when we compare the trends as relative change, we can see that platform tourism is growing much faster. In countries such as Sweden, Norway and Malta, the gap between platform and hotel tourism has widened the most.
A detailed map of Europe reveals that regions along the Mediterranean coast attract the most visitors. In terms of nights spent, three Spanish regions are in the top five: Málaga, Alicante and Barcelona, alongside Rome and Paris.
Moreover, countries such as Croatia, Greece, Portugal and Malta have a high proportion of foreign visitors. This is in contrast to France, whose coastline is dominated by domestic tourists. Overall, six out of ten guest nights in Europe in 2025 were spent by international tourists. In islands such as Iceland or Malta, this figure exceeds 96 per cent.
Malta is also an example of an island with a high level of tourism when it comes to the number of overnight stays relative to population size. Together with the Greek islands, Canary Islands and the Croatian coastline, the platform tourism is especially intense here. To give you an idea of the scale: The Greek island of Lefkada has 56 thousand booked nights per 1000 inhabitants, while major tourist cities such as Paris have “only” over 8000.
Shifting seasonality patterns
One third of all guest nights were concentrated in the peak summer months of July and August. The strongest summer peak season was recorded in Croatia, Slovenia, Sweden and Greece. In Greece and Croatia, up to 30 per cent of nights spent are in August alone, mainly by international visitors.
However, it is not only classic Mediterranean destinations that attract travellers in summer anymore. Nordic countries, as well as colder seaside destinations such as the Polish Baltic coast, are attracting more and more platform tourists.
Even though they still have a summer season, hotter destinations such as Sicily, Crete and the Balearic Islands have seen an even higher increase in nights spent in the months before the traditional summer season, particularly in April. The data on platform tourism suggests that a growing number of people might be rather avoiding such areas in the hottest months.
A recent report by the EU Joint Research Centre simulates how future climate change will alter tourism demand in general. “The Central and Northern European regions are projected to become more attractive for year-round tourism activities. Conversely, 52 European regions spanning Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Romania are expected to experience a decline in tourist numbers compared to current levels.” The abovementioned month of April is projected to record the “highest increase in tourist flows in Europe, growing by 1.96 percent in the 1.5°C warming scenario and by 8.89 percent in the 4°C scenario”.
The shifting patterns are getting visible also within one country. As reported by our partner El Diario, more than half of the visitors to the northern regions in Spain are domestic tourists escaping the heat. Rising temperatures turn these regions into a sort of climate refuge during the summer months.
One striking example of the expansion of the short-term rental market is Tromsø in northern Norway. Famous for its Northern Lights tours, this small city is attracting an increasing number of tourists. According to figures from the Norwegian Tax Administration analysed by our partner iTromsø, revenues from Airbnb and short-term rentals in Tromsø have increased by almost 500 per cent over the past four years, while the number of short-term rental apartments has tripled. The municipality is currently investigating several cases where homes are suspected of being used illegally as short-term rental flats.
Housing under the pressure
There are several cities across Europe adopting various regulations against short term rentals. For example in Amsterdam, the figures of platform tourism have so far never reached the pre-pandemic levels and 2025 data confirms the trend. The Amsterdam municipality passed a new law in 2019 that requires hosts to register their property with the municipality. In addition, the city council limited the number of days the apartment can be rented to 30 nights per year.
Similarly, In Vienna an exceptional permit is required for short-term rentals exceeding 90 days per year. Regulation came into effect in July 2024 and we can see a slight drop in 2025 platform tourism data.
In Berlin the foreign platform tourism dropped by 4 percent in comparison to 2024. However, the decreasing trend in comparison to the year before is also confirmed by local Berlin statistics which cover registered accommodation such as hotels.
In Prague, platform tourism has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels. However that is not the case for hotel accommodation. The official city data reveals that 2025 overnight stays even topped the record year of 2019. However, the city has not adopted any regulations on a scale comparable to Vienna or Amsterdam.
Barcelona on the other hand recently announced an ambitious plan to phase out all short-term rentals by November 2028 in an attempt to combat local housing unaffordability. Platform tourism growth seems to be slowing down, as 2025 data shows. The increase has not stopped yet though.
While in other regions the number of these properties has at least doubled since 2018, in Catalonia the increase is 40 percent. This moderation could be linked to the fact that regulation of this sector began earlier, especially in Barcelona, and that significant resources have been allocated to combating illegal vacation rentals listed on these platforms. The City Council froze the issuance of licenses for vacation rentals as early as 2014 and the municipal government declared war on unlicensed touristic homes advertised on Airbnb.
An academic paper published in 2019 as a Barcelona case study showed that short-term rentals can increase both rents and property prices. The results showed that Airbnb activity in Barcelona had led to an increase in both rents and housing prices, with the effects on prices being larger than those on rents. For a neighbourhood with average Airbnb activity, our preferred results indicate that rents have increased by 1.9%, while transaction (posted) prices have increased by 5.3% (3.7%). In areas with high Airbnb activity, rents are estimated to have increased by as much as 7%, while increases in transaction and posted prices are as high as 19% and 14%, respectively.’
In cities with a high increase in platform tourism, the housing market is under particular pressure. This can be further accelerated by continuous urbanisation, when the city’s population keeps growing, as well as by an increasing proportion of young people searching for a flat.