During the fourth quarter of 2022 (Q4 2022), guests spent around 97 million nights in short-term rental accommodation in the EU, booked via Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group or TripAdvisor according to Eurostat, the statistical service of the EU.

This corresponds to around +25% compared with the same period in 2021. With this value, platform tourism exceeded the levels (+10%) recorded in the pre-pandemic Q4 2019, when platforms reported around 88 million guest nights.

In all of 2022, guests spent around 547 million nights in EU short-term rental accommodation booked via online platforms. This means that there was a robust recovery compared with 2021 (364 million nights; +50%) and that nights spent even exceeded 2019 levels (512 million nights; +7%).

Eurostat publishes monthly data on short-stay accommodation offered via online platforms for Q4 2022 at the national level. In addition, regional data for Q3 2022 are also being released. These data are collected from four private collaborative economy platforms as part of an agreement with the European Commission in March 2020. Regional data are released one quarter later than the national data in accordance with the rules set out in the agreement.

While comparisons with 2021 document a robust recovery in all 31 countries (EU and EFTA countries), there were differences compared with 2019.

In 2022, the largest increases in nights spent compared with 2019 were recorded in Sweden (+33%), France (+31%) and Belgium (+23%). However, 14 EU members were still lagging behind 2019 levels. The most prominent decreases were recorded in Czechia (-36%), Hungary (-27%), Ireland and Estonia (each -23%).

In Cyprus, there was a total of 3.796 million nights booked through online platform during 2022, with bookings not having yet reached their pre-pandemic level (4.241 million nights in 2019). However online bookings have increased compared to 2020 (1.352 million) and to 2021 (2.685 million).

Coastal regions remain popular during summer of 2022

Traditional coastal holiday destinations remained popular in the summer of 2022, more specifically during Q3 of 2022 (July - August - September), the latest period for which Eurostat can release data on the regional level.

The most popular regions for short-term rental accommodation booked via online platforms were Jadranska Hrvatska in Croatia (20 million nights), the French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (11 million) and the Spanish region of Andalucía (10 million).

In the top 20 regions, France had seven regions, Spain five, Italy four, and Croatia, Portugal, Greece and Romania had one each.

In Cyprus, which is considered a single region for statistical reasons on a NUTS 2 level, there was a total of 1.6 million nights booked during Q3 2022.