British tourists in Italy: 7 million trips, €5.3 billion, and a 2026 that official data have not yet counted

Four counts of one market

The Bank of Italy's Indagine sul turismo internazionale is the main Italian count of trips into the country. It surveys travellers at the border. Its unit is the trip, which it calls "viaggiatori", so one person who visits twice counts twice. It includes same-day visitors, such as cruise passengers who leave the ship for a day. It covers residents of the UK, whatever their nationality. On that basis UK residents made 7.0 million trips to Italy in 2025, or 7.6% of all foreign trips. Of those, 6.6 million included at least one night.

The ISTAT and Eurostat accommodation series counts something else. It records each check-in at a registered hotel, holiday rental business or campsite. A UK visitor who sleeps in Rome and then Florence on one trip generates two arrivals. Stays with friends, family or in a second home fall outside it. Eurostat's database, updated on 12 October 2026, shows 4,687,238 arrivals and 17,338,022 nights by UK residents in Italy in 2025. The average registered stay works out at about 3.7 nights per check-in, a figure we derived by dividing nights by arrivals.

The third count comes from the airports. ENAC, Italy's civil aviation authority, put UK traffic at 16.3 million passengers in 2025, up 5.2%. The UK supplied 51.6% of Italy's passengers to and from non-EU Europe and about 10% of all international passengers. Airport passengers count each leg of each journey. A return trip counts twice, and Italians flying to London count as much as Britons flying to Rome. The ENAC figure measures the air link and should never be read as a count of visitors.

The fourth count comes from the UK side. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) runs the International Passenger Survey. Its Travel trends 2025 release, published on 16 October 2026, put visits to Italy by residents of Great Britain at 5.7 million in 2025. Italy ranked third, behind Spain at 19.1 million and France at 9.1 million. The 2024 release gave Italy 4.9 million. The ONS labels these figures official statistics in development. It also warns that 2024 and 2025 are hard to compare, because the 2024 annual figures combine two survey designs. Its 2024 page notes a later correction to destination airport data for air passengers, and the size of that change was not stated on the pages we read. The destination figures cover Great Britain only, while the UK-wide total of 99.9 million visits abroad includes Northern Ireland.

These four numbers belong side by side and never in one equation. The Bank of Italy's 7.0 million and the ONS's 5.7 million look like rival counts of the same people. They are not built the same way. One is a survey at the Italian border that includes same-day visits and any UK resident. The other is a survey of departures from Great Britain. Dividing one by the other measures nothing.

The accommodation series has a further problem. ISTAT's Storie dati release of 17 July 2026 says the 2025 figure includes nights in private rentals run on a non-business basis for the first time. Without them, Italy's 2025 total would be 481 million nights. With them it exceeds 535 million. The Eurostat data carry no break flag. On the published figures, UK nights rose 23.5% in 2025 and UK arrivals rose 23.2%. Neither is growth on a like-for-like basis, and no UK figure without the private rentals has been published. We covered the same break in our Italy tourism record watch for 2026 and in the comparison of Italy and Spain by tourism nights.

Spending up, stays down

The Bank of Italy's figures show a market that pays more for less time. UK spending rose from €4,536 million in 2023 to €4,928 million in 2024 and €5,303 million in 2025. The 7.6% rise in 2025 compares with 1.6% for Germany, 3.0% for the United States and 5.4% for France. Among the ten countries in the Bank's Table 3, the UK grew fastest on spending; Canada was next at 5.7%. The UK accounted for 9.3% of all foreign spending in Italy in 2025.

On size, the UK ranks third. The Bank's Table 3 lists ten countries. Germany leads at €8,822 million, followed by the United States at €6,605 million and the UK at €5,303 million. France is fourth at €4,648 million.

Trips grew more slowly than spending. Total UK trips rose 4.2%, from 6.8 million to 7.0 million. The rounded figures imply a rise of about 2.9%, so the Bank's printed rate rests on unrounded data. Trips with an overnight stay rose 7.2%, from 6.2 million to 6.6 million.

Stays shortened in each of the last two years. The average UK overnight trip lasted 5.9 nights in 2023, 5.5 in 2024 and 5.3 in 2025, a fall of 4.9% in the latest year. That is below the 6.4-night average for all foreign visitors. Americans averaged 10.2 nights, and Germans 6.5.

Spending per night rose in step. The Bank puts UK spending per night at €130.3 in 2023, €143.3 in 2024 and €151.5 in 2025. Over two years that is a rise of 16.3%, by our calculation. In 2025 UK visitors spent 8.9% more per night than the all-foreign average of €139.1. Among the six markets we compared (Germany, the US, France, Spain, Switzerland and the UK), only Americans spent more per night, at €178.1. The Bank's per-night figure covers spending by overnight visitors only.

Two derived figures give a sense of scale. Spending of €5,303 million over 7.0 million trips gives about €758 per trip. Overnight spending of €5,288 million over 6.6 million overnight trips gives about €801. Both are our calculations from rounded trip counts.

The survey implies about 35 million UK nights in Italy in 2025, from 6.6 million overnight trips at 5.3 nights each. ENIT's research office, working from Bank of Italy data, printed 34.9 million nights, up 2%, in a press kit presented in London on 27 July 2026. That figure includes nights with friends and relatives and in owned homes. It is not comparable with the 17.3 million nights in registered accommodation, and the gap between them is not a measure of anything.

The exchange rate did not explain much of the rise. On European Central Bank reference rates, the euro cost UK visitors about 1.2% more in 2025 than in 2024, by our calculation from annual averages of 0.84662 and 0.85679 pounds per euro. At the 2025 average rate, UK spending in Italy was worth about £4.5 billion. The conversion is ours and only illustrative.

Holidays drove the growth

The Bank of Italy splits spending by purpose, and the UK split shows where the money went. Spending on trips for personal reasons rose 8.4% in 2025, to €4,724 million. Within that, spending on holidays rose 16.0%, from €3,234 million to €3,751 million. Holidays took 70.7% of all UK spending in 2025, up from 63.0% in 2023. Both shares are our calculations.

The rest of UK spending barely moved. Subtracting personal-trip spending from the total leaves €497 million in 2023, €570 million in 2024 and €579 million in 2025. That residual covers work and business travel. The Bank does not print it as a UK row, so it is our arithmetic, and it rose about 1.6% in 2025.

ENIT's press kit carries the same pattern on its own terms. It counts 4.5 million UK leisure travellers in 2025, up 16.1%, spending €3,751 million. It also reports UK lake-holiday trips at 365,240, up 137.2%, with spending of €412.88 million, up 97.8%. Those figures are ENIT's, based on Bank of Italy data, and the Bank's published tables do not include a lake category. For readers planning that kind of trip, our Lake Garda travel guide covers the main bases. The lake figure is large, but it describes a small segment, at about 5% of UK trips.

The Jubilee played a small part for the UK. The Bank of Italy's note on Jubilee travel, by Claudio Doria and dated 28 August 2026, counts 106,000 UK travellers who came to Italy to take part. That was 7.7% of all Jubilee travellers, behind the United States at 17.1%, Spain and Poland. UK Jubilee travellers spent €111 million. Against 7.0 million UK trips, the Jubilee group is about 1.5%, a rough ratio of ours that mixes two definitions. On that ratio the Jubilee can explain little of the UK's growth in 2025.

A shrinking share of hotel and rental nights

The accommodation series tells a less buoyant story for the years it can still be compared. UK nights in Italian registered accommodation were 13.67 million in 2019 and 14.04 million in 2024. That is a rise of 2.7% over five years. Nights by all foreign guests rose 15.1% over the same period. The UK's share of foreign nights fell from 6.20% in 2019 to 5.74% in 2022, 5.56% in 2023 and 5.53% in 2024. All of these figures are our calculations from Eurostat.

In 2025 the share rose to 5.75%. That figure sits on the new basis, which adds private non-business rentals for every market at once. Shares are less affected by the break than levels, because the change applies across the board. Still, the 2025 rise could reflect a larger UK use of private rentals and need not mean a UK recovery. The data cannot tell the two apart.

Other markets ranked ahead of the UK on registered nights in 2025. Germany logged 71.05 million, the United States 28.78 million and France 19.41 million. The UK, at 17.34 million, came fourth among the nine markets we checked. Switzerland returned no data and was not checked. The UK ranks third on survey spending and fourth on registered nights. Both rankings are correct for their own series.

The Bank of Italy survey and the accommodation series point in different directions over time, and both can be right. The survey found UK overnight trips rising from 5.8 million in 2023 to 6.6 million in 2025. The accommodation series found UK nights growing far more slowly than other markets before 2025. Shorter stays, more nights outside registered accommodation, or both, would produce that pattern. No published source measures which.

Where Britons go in Italy

The Bank of Italy publishes no UK breakdown by region, city or type of accommodation. Its regional table gives only macro-areas, for all foreign visitors combined. Regional figures for the UK come from other bodies, on other bases.

The most complete set is for 2024. An ENIT release of 4 November 2025, attributing the figures to the Ministry of Tourism's statistics office and ENIT's research office, put UK nights in registered accommodation at 2,317,398 in Veneto, 2,309,130 in Lazio, 1,776,202 in Lombardy, 1,568,113 in Campania and 1,438,148 in Tuscany. By province, Rome led with 2,268,431, followed by Naples with 1,407,742, Venice with 1,124,345, Verona with 969,902 and Milan with 720,535. These figures predate the 2025 basis change. Visitors heading for Rome or Venice can start with our Rome travel guide and our Venice travel guide.

The 2025 regional figures are less reliable. ENIT's July 2026 press kit gives UK figures for three southern regions. For Sardinia it reports 213,240 travellers, down 5.3%, with nights up 10.6% and spending down 5%. For Sicily it reports 215,030 travellers, down 54.6%, and spending down 56.5%. That Sicily figure conflicts with ENIT's own trade newsletter of November 2025, which put UK airport arrivals in Sicily up 11.6%, to over 148,000, in January to August 2025, without naming the source of that figure. We found no explanation for the gap. The Sicily row should not be read as a trend. The Calabria table in the same press kit shows a gap for April, so the Calabria figures are not used here either.

Airport data show where the flights go, and they do not show who is on them. ENAC's four busiest London routes to Italy in 2025 were Rome Fiumicino to Gatwick, with 820,679 passengers, down 11.7%; Fiumicino to Heathrow, with 783,881, up 7.6%; Milan Malpensa to Gatwick, with 751,249, down 3.6%; and Milan Linate to Heathrow, with 589,347, up 23.6%. ENIT's trade newsletter said London would account for about three-quarters of the estimated 2.7 million UK airport arrivals in January to August 2025, and Manchester for about 10%.

2026 has forecasts and no counts

There is no official Italian figure for UK visitors in 2026. The Bank of Italy's monthly commentaries split foreign visitors only into EU and non-EU groups. The July 2026 commentary put foreign spending at €8.3 billion, up 6.8% on July 2025, with no UK row. The Ministry of Tourism's August 2026 bulletin reported July foreign nights up 6% and arrivals up 5.1%, with no UK breakdown. Eurostat and ISTAT publish no nationality split for 2026 months.

The commercial data that filled part of this gap for Americans do not help with the UK. Nexi's tourism spending report, reported by AziendaBanca on 15 October 2026, put foreign card spending in Italy at €16.2 billion for January to August 2026, up 5%. It gave figures for the United States and Germany and growth rates for Austria and Switzerland. The coverage does not mention the UK at all, and we could not open the Nexi report itself.

The only UK-specific numbers for 2026 look forward. The Ministry of Tourism's undated summer 2026 forecast, with data extracted on 1 July 2026, said UK searches for flights to Italy were up 39% on a year earlier. It said direct scheduled seats from the UK were up 13%, against 17% from Spain. Searches measure interest, and seats measure capacity. Neither counts a traveller. The same report gave the UK 3% of travellers in summer 2025, on a base it does not define, which differs from both the Bank of Italy share and the airport share.

Airlines added capacity. The Local reported on 26 January 2026 that easyJet would launch Newcastle to Rome Fiumicino from 30 March, Glasgow to Rome Fiumicino in February and Manchester to Bari from 3 July. Garda Unico reported a "significant increase" in UK visitors to Lake Garda in 2025, according to ilDolomiti on 7 March 2026, without a figure.

The pound moved little against the euro. On the ECB rates, the euro averaged about 0.8635 pounds from January to September 2026, against 0.85679 for 2025 as a whole. That made the euro about 0.8% dearer for UK visitors, by our calculation from monthly averages in a Bundesbank table. On 30 October 2026 the ECB rate stood at 0.83380 pounds per euro. Currency is unlikely to have moved UK demand much in either direction.

Entry rules and the stories about Britons

Entry rules changed for UK visitors in 2025 and 2026. The EU's Entry/Exit System began a progressive start on 12 October 2025 and became fully operational on 10 April 2026, according to the European Commission. GOV.UK's Italy entry page, updated on 29 October 2026, says UK visitors may need to register fingerprints and a photo on first entry, free of charge. Children aged 11 or under are photographed but not fingerprinted. The record lasts three years. The page also restates the passport rules. A passport must have been issued less than 10 years before arrival and must be valid for at least three months after the planned departure from the Schengen area. UK visitors can stay 90 days in any 180 without a visa. The page does not mention ETIAS, the EU travel authorisation that is not yet in operation. Our analysis of EES and ETIAS at Italian borders covers the wider rollout. This summary is factual and is not legal advice; travellers should check GOV.UK before they go.

Only one measured UK figure for EES queues in Italy was found. The Local's Spanish edition reported on 20 July 2026 that Ivan Bassato, chief aviation officer at Aeroporti di Roma, which runs Fiumicino, told the BBC that average waits for UK nationals had risen from 7 minutes to 20. That is about 2.9 times longer, by our calculation, and the airport published no method. It describes one airport and cannot be read as a national figure.

Other queue claims rest on forecasts. The Majorca Daily Bulletin headlined six-hour queues for Britons on 20 June 2026, and its article describes the figure as a projection by IATA, the airline association. The figure traces to IATA's regional vice-president for Europe, Rafael Schvartzman, who spoke in early June of "expectations of three, four, five, six hours" at EU airports, as reported by The Times and Travel Tomorrow. It was a forecast for EU airports in general and not a measured wait in Italy. Marco Troncone, chief executive of Aeroporti di Roma, told the Financial Times, as reported by Travel Weekly, that there was "no way that we can deliver 100 per cent of the enrolment". That was a warning about capacity, and it gave no measured wait.

The Etna eruption in August 2026 closed Catania airport at the height of the holiday season. Reuters reported on 14 August that about 630 flights were diverted from Catania between 6 and 12 August and that more than a third of 1,974 scheduled flights were cancelled. No source we found gave a UK share of the passengers affected.

Two rule stories framed general measures as British ones. Nomad Lawyer warned on 28 June 2026 of a "savage £2,100 Italy penalty" for British holidaymakers. The rule it describes is the Cinque Terre national park's ban on unsuitable footwear on hiking trails, with fines of €50 to €2,500, and it applies to every hiker. The article's own lede gives £2,130, and it names no source. In April 2024 the Birmingham Mail, republished by Yahoo News UK, headlined Venice's day-tripper fee as "new rules for UK tourists". The fee applies to day-trippers of every nationality. In 2026 it ran for 60 days from 3 April, at €5 if booked at least four days ahead and €10 otherwise, according to Time Out. Our Venice access fee results analysis covers what it has raised.

One claim holds up. Tourism minister Daniela Santanchè called the UK the "third largest nation in terms of expenditure" in an ENIT release of 4 November 2025. The release gave no source for the ranking. The Bank of Italy's 2025 table, published in June 2026, is consistent with it.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers from the UK should plan for the border more than for the exchange rate. The euro cost about the same in 2026 as in 2025. EES registration is now standard on a first visit, and the only measured UK wait we found, at Fiumicino, roughly tripled to 20 minutes on average. Fines and fees reported as aimed at Britons apply to everyone. The data also show UK visitors taking shorter trips, at 5.3 nights on average in 2025, with spending per night rising.

Tourism businesses and investors have strong 2025 evidence and weak 2026 evidence. UK spending rose 7.6% in 2025, holiday spending 16.0%, and spending per night has risen 16.3% in two years. The same visitors stay fewer nights, and their share of registered nights slipped from 2019 to 2024. For 2026 there is no UK count, only 39% more flight searches and 13% more direct seats. Those numbers suggest interest and capacity. They do not show arrivals.

Journalists and analysts should name the unit with every UK figure, as the box above sets out. The 23.5% rise in registered nights is a change in coverage and should not be called growth. The Sicily fall in ENIT's press kit should not be used. Headlines that tie Britons to EES queues, Etna or fines mostly have no UK number behind them. The gap this article finds is the same one the series keeps meeting, with good annual counts and none for the current year.