Tourism in Italy

Italy recorded a total of 62 million tourists in 2018, ranking 5th in the world in absolute terms.

Without including the size of a country, such a ranking list may not be very meaningful. By putting the tourist numbers in relation to the population of Italy, the result is much more comparable picture: With 1.0 tourists per resident, Italy ranked 56th in the world. In Southern Europe, it ranked 11th.

Italy generated around 51.60 billion US Dollar in the tourism sector alone. This corresponds to 2.6 percent of its the gross domestic product and approximately 25 percent of all international tourism receipts in Southern Europe.

A global comparison can be found here › International tourism

Back to overview: Italy

Most popular destinations in Italy

No less than 4 cities in Italy are among the top 100 most popular destinations worldwide. In 2018 Rom reached the 16th place with 10.07 million tourists. According to Euromonitor all tourists with at least one overnight stay were counted.

City	Tourists	Rank
Rom	10,065,400	#16
Mailand	6,481,300	#35
Venedig	5,502,500	#46
Florenz	5,059,900	#51

On average, each of the tourists arriving in 2018 spent about 749 US Dollars. Conversely, the inhabitants of Italy spend as much as 1,008 dollars a year when they themselves spend vacations abroad.

Development of the tourism sector in Italy from 1995 to 2018

The following chart shows the number of tourist arrivals registered in Italy each year. Anyone who spends at least one night in the country but does not live there for more than 12 months is considered a tourist. Insofar as the survey included the purpose of the trip, business trips and other non-tourism travel purposes have already been excluded. The number of people passing through within the same day, and e.g. crew members of ships or flights are also not considered as tourists in most countries. If the same person travels in and out more than once within the same year, each visit counts again.

Data in the chart are given in millions of tourists. The red line represents the average of all 14 countries in Southern Europe.

Tourists per year in Italy

Revenues in tourism

In 1995, tourism revenues amounted to 30.41 billion USD, or about 2.6 percent of the gross national product. This corresponded to about 31.05 million tourists at that time and roughly 979 USD per person. Within 23 years, the country's dependence on tourism has decreased slightly. In the last year of the survey, the revenue now amounts to 51.60 billion USD, accounting for 2.5 percent of the gross national product. Each visitor now spends an average of 838 USD for his holiday in Italy.

Tourism receipts in Italy per year

All data for Italy in detail

Year	Number of tourists	Receipts	% of GNP	Receipts per tourist
1995	31.05 m	30.41 bn $	2.6 %	979 $
1996	32.94 m	31.88 bn $	2.4 %	968 $
1997	34.69 m	31.42 bn $	2.5 %	906 $
1998	34.93 m	31.34 bn $	2.5 %	897 $
1999	36.52 m	29.57 bn $	2.4 %	810 $
2000	41.18 m	28.71 bn $	2.5 %	697 $
2001	39.56 m	26.92 bn $	2.3 %	680 $
2002	39.80 m	28.19 bn $	2.2 %	708 $
2003	39.60 m	32.59 bn $	2.1 %	823 $
2004	37.07 m	37.87 bn $	2.1 %	1,022 $
2005	36.51 m	38.37 bn $	2.1 %	1,051 $
2006	41.06 m	41.65 bn $	2.1 %	1,014 $
2007	43.65 m	46.14 bn $	2.1 %	1,057 $
2008	42.73 m	46.19 bn $	1.9 %	1,081 $
2009	43.24 m	40.38 bn $	1.8 %	934 $
2010	43.63 m	38.43 bn $	1.8 %	881 $
2011	46.12 m	43.27 bn $	1.9 %	938 $
2012	46.36 m	40.94 bn $	2.0 %	883 $
2013	47.70 m	43.83 bn $	2.0 %	919 $
2014	48.58 m	45.56 bn $	2.1 %	938 $
2015	50.73 m	41.42 bn $	2.3 %	816 $
2016	52.37 m	42.42 bn $	2.3 %	810 $
2017	58.25 m	46.72 bn $	2.4 %	802 $
2018	61.57 m	51.60 bn $	2.5 %	838 $

All data correspond to the information of the World Tourism Organization.