Data published by the European Office for Statistics, Eurostat, reveals that during the third quarter of 2022, guests spent about 251 million nights in the European Union through online platforms such as Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group, or TripAdvisor, with an increase of about 24%, in comparison with the same period of 2021.

Such data also show that platform tourism exceeded the summer levels recorded in 2019 by 9% when these platforms reported around 230 million guest nights, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

According to Eurostat, taking into account the gradual recovery of booking numbers occurring during the second half of 2021, in the first half of 2022, bookings reached and also surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time.

In addition, in the first six months of last year, 199.4 million nights were booked, compared to the booking of 83.8 million nights registered during the same period in 2021 and 193.3 million nights in 2019, which means a modest increase of 3.2%.

The same authority also revealed that the third quarter of 2022 had a more pronounced increase, with 250.9 million nights, compared to 202.3 million in 2021 and 230.4 million in 2019.

Eurostat also points out that if these figures reached in 2022 are compared with those of 2021, they document a strong recovery in all 31 countries, those of the EU and EFTA, but that these figures had differences compared to 2019.

Nights Spent in Portugal 4% Down, Though Coastal Destinations Remain the Most Popular

As for countries such as Belgium, Sweden, and France, overnights in the third quarter of 2022 rose by around 30%, but the 12 EU member states were still behind 2019 levels, including Portugal at -4%, which was the most prominent destination country with a significant decline.

Meanwhile, traditional coastal holiday destinations were the most popular in the second quarter of 2022. Thus, the most popular regions were Andalucia in Spain with 6.5 million guest nights, Jadranska Hrvatska in Croatia with 5.5 million guest nights, and Provence-Alpes -Côte d’Azur in France with 5.2 million guest nights.

In these three regions, together with Catalonia in Spain and Île de France in France, they had also spent more than four million nights each. At the same time, France and Spain had six regions each in the top 20 regions, Italy had five areas, Portugal two, and Croatia one.

In July, Eurostat revealed that the number of nights booked for tourism through accommodation rental platforms Airbnb, Expedia Group, Tripadvisor and Booking increased by 34% in 2022 compared to 2021.

In this regard, the same said that the recovery rate remained below the pre-pandemic levels by 29% when 512 million tourist nights were booked.

 

Source: SchengenVisaInfo.com