Europe’s tourist hotspots are braced for a record number of visitors this summer as holidaymakers spurn the US and the Middle East, adding to growing concerns about overtourism on the continent.
Analysts say that while European holidaymakers are partly responsible for the increase in visitor numbers to the continent’s top destinations, the main reason is the strong post-pandemic bounceback in visitors from the US.
More than 7.7mn Americans flew to Europe between January and May this year, a 6 per cent increase on the same period last year, according to the US National Travel and Tourism Office. Eurostar has recorded a 45 per cent jump in bookings by US travellers for June and July, compared with 2024.
Visits to Europe last year were boosted by the Paris Olympics and Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, but given this year’s calendar lacks events of that magnitude there was a fear visits to the continent “would be down quite strongly”, said Bernstein analyst Richard Clarke.
“[But] actually it looks like it will be extremely strong. [Europe] could be poised for a record summer,” he said.
The increase in visitors has sparked protests against overtourism by residents of Barcelona, Amsterdam and the Greek island of Santorini, who complain that it leads to a shortage of housing and unaffordable rents.
This week, residents of Venice joined a protest against Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s opulent three day wedding in the city. Locals have plastered the city walls with “No Space for Bezos” posters.
The influx is good news for Europe’s hoteliers, but not for the continent’s other tourists. Bernstein estimates US visitors pay between 20 and 25 per cent more for hotel rooms than the average guest because they tend to book more expensive rooms and prefer flexible bookings.
Clarke said Americans visiting Europe were “pressing up prices for everybody”.
US hotel chains are looking to cash in. Hilton aims to open another 65 hotels in Europe this year. Marriott, which over the past two years has grown its number of rooms on the continent by 11.5 per cent, has singled out Europe as a priority. Marriott’s Emea president Satya Anand said Greece was “a standout destination”.
Hotel operators are seeing demand in Europe spread outside of the top destinations, too. Hilton is opening new hotels in some lesser-known destinations, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Before Covid, American travellers went to Lisbon and that was it. Then they started going to Porto . . . but now they are dispersing into Algarve or Douro Valley,” said Karin Sheppard, Emea president at IHG, which plans to open roughly 40,000 more rooms in Europe within the next few years.
“Europe is . . . [already] buzzing but it will intensify,” she said.
In addition a higher proportion of Europeans are choosing to holiday in Europe rather than the US.
The “rhetoric coming out of the US administration” around tariffs has discouraged Europeans from visiting the US, according to Jamie Lane, chief economist at AirDNA.
“We are seeing that across the board, from the Germans, the French, the Dutch,” he said, adding that would-be tourists are also deterred by stricter controls at the US border.
In the first four months of the year at least 22mn more European nationals opted to travel within their own country, according to Eurostat. The number of Europeans flying to the US dropped by 2.2 per cent over the same period, according to US government data.
In the aftermath of Israel’s attack on Iran this month, travellers have been swapping planned trips to surrounding destinations in the Middle East, including Dubai, Egypt and Turkey, for holidays in Europe, according to several package holiday providers and hotel chains.
There was a 40 per cent increase in cancellations of short-term rental bookings in the Middle East in a single week this month, according to data from AirDNA. Bookings of short-term lets rose by almost 7 per cent in Europe in the week ended June 21st.
Wyndham Hotels, which owns the Days Inn chain, has seen cancellations across the Middle East this month. Some of those holidaymakers were rebooking in Europe because “they feel safe”, said the company’s Emea president, Dimitris Manikis, adding that “Europe is a winner”.
Simon Vincent, president for Emea at US hotel giant Hilton, acknowledged the Middle East conflict had brought some “short-term disruption” but also said its hotels in places like Ibiza and Cannes “are absolutely packed. We are still ramping up to the peak summer season but it’s already very busy.”
Blackstone-owned Hotel Investment Partners, which has 70 mostly beachfront hotels across the continent, is seeing similar trends.
James Seppala, Blackstone’s head of European real estate, said European travellers that “might have been looking at Egypt, the Red Sea, Turkey and Cyprus, may be more hesitant” but that “everybody wants to go to Sicily and Sardinia and the Greek islands”.
