21. Mai 2025, 15:05 Uhr | Lesezeit: 5 Minuten
Where will it be particularly crowded again this summer? New figures from the European Commission provide a clue. They have collected the number of tourist overnight stays in recent years, compared them with the population figures and thus identified the most popular and crowded travel destinations on the continent. These are the results.
We have been aware of overtourism for a long time and more and more interest is emerging in alternative travel destinations. In other words, places where not everyone goes on holiday. Where you can be alone with yourself and not have to wait in line, fight for shade or even a place on the beach. Where you can relax and really just go on vacation. Zakynthos is not one of these places. In fact, the small Greek island has just been infamously named the most crowded of all vacation spots in Europe. At the same time, the island is not the one that attracts the most visitors.
Where do the numbers come from?
The European Commission has collected various tourism data in its EU Tourism Dashboard, including so-called tourism intensity. This refers to the number of overnight stays by tourists compared to the number of residents. According to the EU Commission, the data is “an indicator of economic dependence on tourism,” and at very high values it can also “show overtourism, scarcity of resources and vulnerability to demand shocks.”
The seasonality of the destinations was also determined, i.e. how strong demand is at certain times during the year. High seasonality can therefore have a negative impact on a destination by creating “an unbalanced relationship between pressure and economic activity”, making the destination more vulnerable to demand shocks, according to the EU Tourism Dashboard. If tourism focuses particularly on certain times of the year instead of remaining stable all year round, this could have a “negative impact on the socio-economic resilience of tourism”.
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The overnight stay figures determined include tourist overnight stays in hotels and similar facilities, on camping and caravan sites as well as in other holiday accommodation.
Zakynthos is the most crowded holiday resort in Europe
The British consumer organization Which? has analyzed the EU Commission's figures and found that the Greek island of Zakynthos is the one that struggles the most with overcrowding of all European travel destinations. According to the EU Commission, 5.93 million overnight guests visited the small island in western Greece in 2023, which itself has just around 40,000 inhabitants. As a map from the EU Commission shows, last year there were 145.24 overnight guests per resident. The seasonality value is also high in Zakynthos or the Ionian Islands at 71.08 percent. In Greece as a whole it is 56.86 percent.
According to the Which analysis, the second-most crowded holiday destination in Europe is Istria in Croatia, which had around 28.1 million overnight guests in 2023. According to the European Commission, in the county on the peninsula in western Croatia there were 142.1 overnight guests per resident (Which?'s figures differ slightly).
In addition to these, there are several other travel destinations that have a darker brown color, which indicates that the intensity is high here. These include North Frisia and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania/Rügen in Germany, destinations in Austria such as East Tyrol and Innsbruck, other regions in Greece and Croatia, the Portuguese Algarve, various parts of Spain, Italy and France as well as Iceland and Lapland in Finland.
Up to 27 tourists per resident! The most crowded vacation spots in Europe
Die am meisten von Massentourismus betroffenen Reiseziele in der EU
These were the most popular holiday destinations in Europe in 2023
In addition to the places that are struggling most with overtourism, the EU Commission's figures also show which holiday destinations in Europe were the most popular in 2023, measured by the number of overnight stays by tourists. The frontrunner here is the Germans' favorite island, Mallorca. In 2023 alone, it recorded 51.19 million tourist overnight stays. The level of tourism intensity is also high on the Balearic island with 54.15 overnight stays per resident. Sunnytrips also regularly reports on Mallorca's problems with the crowds of tourists. When comparing the numbers, however, Mallorca's neighboring islands of Ibiza and Formentera (counted together on the map) as well as Menorca are more critical. There were 65.63 and 63.73 tourist overnight stays per resident, respectively.
Number two of the most popular holiday destinations is the French capital Paris. This counted 43.92 million overnight stays in 2023. Rome is the third most popular travel destination with 41.14 million overnight stays. Several other Italian and Spanish city break destinations record between 30 and 40 million tourist overnight stays per year. These include Barcelona, Venice, Tenerife and Madrid. Berlin had 29.38 million in the same year.
These travel destinations are becoming increasingly popular
In its communication on the imbalance in European tourism, the EU Commission also makes it clear that the cities of Porto and Athens in particular are becoming increasingly popular with tourists. In both, the number of overnight stays has increased by 60 percent since 2019. Danish Copenhagen, Irish Cork and the Dutch province of North Limburg have also become more popular. All three doubled the number of overnight stays during the study period. Barcelona, which was already overcrowded, has also increased: here the dashboard shows an increase of 16 percent.
According to the European Commission, a trend is extremely clear from the numbers: almost 63 percent of all overnight stays in 2023 were in popular coastal or city break destinations. These make up just 33 percent of the area of the entire European Union.
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