EU tourist bed capacity dips, Cyprus stable

The number of beds available in tourist establishments across the EU decreased slightly in 2021 compared to 2019 but remained stable in Cyprus.

Last year, the EU had an estimated 28.1 million beds available across 597,000 tourist establishments.

The number of beds places in Cyprus (90,854) was stable compared to 2020 (90,900) and very slightly increased from 2019 (90,188) and 2018 (87,240).

In 2019, the number of beds in the EU increased from 28.2 million beds in 2018 to 28.8 million.

Italy and France accounted for slightly more than one-third of the available capacity, with 5.1 million beds each.

They were followed by Spain (3.8 million bed places, representing 13% of the total) and Germany (3.5 million; 12%).

Compared with 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic started, the number of beds and establishments remained stable.

However, compared with 2019, the number of beds placed in 2021 was still 2% lower (28.8 million), and so were establishments (3% lower; 617,953).

Data for 2021 on nights spent by international guests in EU tourist accommodation show that 75.1% of the 591 million nights spent were by tourists from other EU Member States, while 16% were tourists from other European countries (of which nearly half were UK residents).

Compared with 2019, there were changes in the market segmentation, most likely due to travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was a substantial increase of 15 percentage points (pp) in the number of nights spent by tourists from the EU states and an 8 pp decrease in nights spent by tourists from other European countries.

Additionally, in 2021 only 8% of nights spent by international guests were spent by tourists from other regions, compared with 16% in 2019.

In 2021, tourists from North America represented 3.5% of the total nights spent by international guests, while guests from Asia represented 2.4%, Central and South America 1.2%, Africa 0.7% and Oceania 0.2%.