Greece in Top 10 EU Countries with Most Tourist Beds in 2021

Greece was among the Top 10 countries in Europe with the highest number of tourist beds in 2021 ranking eighth overall, according to a recent report released by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical authority.

More specifically, last year, the EU had an estimated total of 28.1 million bed places available across 597,000 tourist establishments with Italy and France accounting for over a third of the total available capacity, Eurostat said.

The leading 10 countries in terms of highest number of tourist beds were: Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Croatia, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Poland, and Czechia.

Source: Eurostat.

Greece’s Short-Term Accommodation Managers Association (STAMA) issued a statement welcoming the data released by Eurostat. “Greece ranked eighth accounting for 4 percent or 1.1 million tourist beds of the total 28.1 million, with short-term rentals playing a major role,” the association said.

Compared with 2020, the number of bed places and accommodation facilities have remained stable but compared to pre-pandemic 2019, the number of tourist beds in 2021 was still down by 2 percent (28.8 million) and the number of establishments by 3 percent.

According to Eurostat’s report, travelers from EU member states accounted for 75 percent of the 591 million nights spent in the Union in 2021, while non-EU visitors represented 16 percent of nights spent of which nearly half were from the UK.

Source: Eurostat.

Other key takeaways of the report:

-in 2021 only 8 percent of nights spent by international guests were spent by tourists from other regions compared with 16 percent in 2019

-last year, travelers from North America represented 4 percent of the total nights spent by international guests at EU tourist accommodation facilities 2 percent from Asia, 1 percent from Central and South America, almost 1 percent from Africa and 0.2 percent from Oceania.