Greece’s South Aegean and Ionian Islands recorded the highest levels of tourism intensity in the European Union in 2024, according to new Eurostat data, highlighting the extraordinary scale of tourism activity relative to the size of their permanent populations.
The South Aegean ranked first by a wide margin, with 127.2 tourist overnight stays per resident, while the Ionian Islands ranked second with 102.6. Italy’s autonomous province of Bolzano/Bozen followed in third place with 68.9 overnight stays per resident.
Tourism intensity is a measure of the relationship between overnight stays in tourist accommodations and the permanent population of a region. It provides an indication of the pressure tourism can place on infrastructure, public services and local communities.
South Aegean far above the EU average
The figures show just how concentrated tourism activity is in some European destinations.
Across the EU, tourism intensity stood at approximately 6.7 overnight stays per resident in 2024. Only 84 of the 244 European regions for which data were available were above that average.
Just seven EU regions recorded more than 50 tourist overnight stays per resident. Three were in Greece: the South Aegean, the Ionian Islands and Crete. The group also included Bolzano/Bozen, Tyrol, Croatia and the Balearic Islands.
The gap between Greece’s leading tourism regions and the EU average is particularly striking. The South Aegean’s figure was nearly 19 times the EU average, while the Ionian Islands’ was more than 15 times higher.
Tourism pressure peaks in summer
The contrast becomes even more pronounced when the data are examined for each region’s peak month.
In the South Aegean, there were 26.9 tourist overnight stays per permanent resident during the peak month. The figure was 24.9 in the Ionian Islands and 11.4 in Crete.
Eurostat notes that in the regions at the top of the ranking, these figures amount to almost one tourist staying overnight for every permanent resident on an average day during the peak month.
The high tourism intensity of Greece’s island regions is also reflected in their heavy reliance on international visitors.
In 2024, foreign visitors accounted for 92.2% of overnight stays in the South Aegean, 93.5% in the Ionian Islands and 94.4% in Crete — among the highest shares in the European Union.
The regions with the lowest tourism intensity
At the other end of the scale are regions where tourism activity is very limited compared with the size of the permanent population.
Mayotte recorded just 0.5 overnight stays per resident, followed by Poland’s Mazowiecki region with 0.7 and Romania’s Sud-Muntenia with 0.8.
Eurostat’s map includes available regional data not only from EU member states but also from European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries and EU candidate countries. However, the ranking of the highest and lowest performers refers exclusively to EU countries.
The figures may underestimate tourism pressure
There is an important limitation to the data: the figures likely underestimate the actual pressure created by tourism.
The overnight-stay figures do not include day visitors, nor people staying in accommodation that is not rented commercially, such as privately owned second homes or the homes of friends and relatives.
For Greece’s most heavily visited island destinations, the data therefore point to a challenge that extends beyond increasing visitor numbers and tourism revenues.
The scale of tourism activity raises broader questions about the capacity of destinations to accommodate visitors, infrastructure, water supplies, waste management, transportation and housing, as well as whether tourism growth can remain sustainable for local communities.
Source: tovima.com
