At the country level, Ireland registered by far the highest increase in nights spent in tourist accommodation in the first quarter of the year, at 35.3 percent, ahead of Malta (11.1 percent) and Denmark (9.3 percent). Among the 9 EU countries, that saw a decline in the share of visitors, Lithuania recorded the biggest decrease (-12.9 percent), followed by Romania (-6.7 percent) and Luxembourg (-3.8 percent).

This information comes from monthly data on tourist accommodation published by Eurostat today. This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Foreign visitors accounted for approximately 46.6 percent of all overnight stays in the first three months of this year, with large differences among EU countries.

The biggest share of foreign overnight stays during this period was recorded in Malta (93.3 percent), Cyprus (85.6 percent) and Luxembourg (85.1 percent).
By contrast, foreign guests accounted for only around one-fifth of overnight stays in Germany (19.9 percent), Poland (20.2 percent) and Romania (22.4 percent).

Compared with the first quarter of 2025, there was an increase in both nights spent by foreign (+5.5 percent) and domestic visitors (+1.7 percent). The largest increases in overnight stays by foreign visitors were recorded in Ireland (+42.3 percent), Lithuania (+24.1 percent) and Slovakia (+15.4 percent). At the other end of the range, the biggest drops in foreign visitors were recorded in Latvia (-7.5 percent), Bulgaria (-4.3 percent) and Belgium (-4 percent).