Cinque Terre Visitor Numbers Nobody Publishes: Cards and Hotel Nights Are Counted, Day Visitors Are Not

The Park's 2015 total, and the card sales it publishes

The figure most English-language pages still repeat comes from the Park itself. A chapter of a Park report, in a section headed "Conclusioni e prospettive", states that about two and a half million visitors reached the park during 2015. The page gives no method. The file shows neither the report's title nor its publication date, so we describe it as a Park report covering 2015.

The same report series publishes sales of the Cinque Terre Card, and the series runs well past 2015. In 2015 the Park sold 637,295 cards: 173,709 of the version covering the trails and 463,586 of the version that adds regional trains. One-day adult cards made up 560,521 of the total. The Park's later sustainability reports, hosted on the government's performance portal, give 870,997 cards in 2016, 1,048,871 in 2017, 1,131,308 in 2018 and 1,135,073 in 2019. Sales fell to 285,115 in 2020 and 550,747 in 2021, then recovered to 1,136,665 in 2022: 185,220 trekking cards and 951,445 train cards. That was 78% more than in 2015 and level with 2019 (our arithmetic). No report we found goes beyond 2022, and no sales figures for 2023 to 2025 have been published.

A card is a ticket. One visitor can buy several over a stay, and a visitor who only walks around a village or swims needs none, because no source we read describes any charge to enter the villages. Card sales therefore measure trail and train use, and they cannot be converted into people.

The 2.5 million figure entered the press in February 2016. Vittorio Alessandro, then the Park's president, told La Repubblica that numbers were already one million too high, according to The Local Italy (16 February 2016). The Local reported about 2.5 million tourists a year and said the Park had yet to set a limit. We found no Park decision setting any cap on the number of visitors, then or since.

Responsible Travel's Cinque Terre guide still says around 2.5 million people visit every year, with no source or date, and Smithsonian (2016) attributed the figure to Alessandro and La Repubblica. Neither names a count behind it.

3.4 million or 4 million: two numbers for 2023

The newest total is on MIC-HUB's project page for the Cinque Terre National Park Authority. It says the study calculated "approximately 3.4 million visitor arrivals entering the park throughout 2023". The page describes the method in one sentence. MIC-HUB cross-referenced Cinque Terre Card sales and cruise passenger numbers with sample counts, including counts over the Republic Day weekend in 2023, and analyzed how visitors arrived. It gives no formula, sample size, error margin or report title. It does not say whether residents, workers or people who enter more than once are included. The word "arrivals" suggests entries, which can exceed the number of individual people. The page carries no publication date.

A different number reached the press. Finestre sull'Arte (7 December 2023) described the Park's study, "Cinque Terre Park. Preliminary Study of Tourist Flows and Design Hypotheses", prepared by MIC-HUB. In the same article, crediting La Repubblica, it reported about 4 million visitors in 2023, one million more than in 2022, and card sales 30% higher than in 2022. Finestre does not say the 4 million comes from the study itself. Finestre gave an average of 17,000 visitors a day, rising above 18,000 at Easter, with about 11,500 arriving by train. It also reported trail counts for 2023 of 138,000 on the Verde Azzurro path between Vernazza and Corniglia and 151,000 on the Vettora path between Monterosso and Vernazza.

Both figures cannot be the 2023 total. The 3.4 million comes from the study's author, on its own page, and the 4 million is La Repubblica's figure as relayed by Finestre. We use 3.4 million and label it an estimate. The 4 million may come from an earlier draft, a wider definition or a rounding by the press. None of the sources says which.

The daily average does not fit either total. At 17,000 a day for 365 days, a year would hold about 6.2 million visits, nearly double either figure (our arithmetic). Spread evenly, 3.4 million is about 9,300 a day (our arithmetic). The 17,000 probably describes a season or a set of busy days, and the article does not say which. Its account of how visitors arrive also conflicts with itself. It gives about 70% by train, 15% by boat and under 10% by car or motorbike, and elsewhere 18% by sea.

The concentration figure is the most consistent part of the record. MIC-HUB estimates that visitors cluster in 3% to 4% of the park. Finestre gives about 1 square kilometer, or 3%. Lorenzo Viviani, the Park's current president, put it at under 4% of the protected area in May 2025 (Quotidiano.net, 4 May 2025). Three percent of 3,860 hectares is about 116 hectares, or 1.2 square kilometers (our arithmetic). No map or method for the estimate has been published.

Figures that circulate without a source

Several other totals are quoted in print, and none of them names its source. Il Post reported about 3 million visitors in 2022, in articles of 5 April and 6 July 2023, and about 4,000 residents in the five villages' municipalities. The second article also said about 870,000 people a year used the Via dell'Amore before its closure in 2012. La Nazione (21 March 2023) reported more than 3.5 million in 2022. The two 2022 figures differ from each other. Finestre's account of the study, 4 million in 2023 and one million more than in 2022, implies about 3 million for 2022 (our arithmetic), which matches Il Post's figure but not La Nazione's.

Two other figures we checked could not be traced at all. We found no source for "up to 30,000 visitors a day" at peak, and no Park decision behind a "1.5 million cap", which equals 2.5 million less the one million the Park's president called too many in 2016.

These figures cannot be joined into a trend. The 2015 figure is a Park statement with no method. The 2023 figure is a consultant's estimate whose method is described only in outline. The 2022 figures have no source. A growth rate between any two of them would compare different methods and possibly different definitions of a visitor, so we have not calculated one.

Village nights end in 2022, and 2025 counts stop at the province

The only official series for the villages counts people who sleep there, and its latest published year is 2022. The Park's sustainability reports reprint overnight stays in registered accommodation for Monterosso, Riomaggiore and Vernazza from 2010, credited to the La Spezia Chamber of Commerce in earlier editions and to the regional tourism observatory in the edition with 2022 data. In 2022 Monterosso recorded 256,625 nights, Riomaggiore 237,790 and Vernazza 109,934. The three together reached 604,349, which is 4.4% more than in 2019 and 25.7% more than the 480,781 of 2015 (our arithmetic). Corniglia and Manarola are hamlets of Vernazza and Riomaggiore, so they are inside these figures; the parts of La Spezia and Levanto within the park cannot be separated. The reports give no arrivals by comune, Vernazza's 2020 figure is marked not available, and no year after 2022 appears in any report we found.

For 2025 the official series stops at the province. The Osservatorio Turistico Regionale della Liguria publishes a full-year summary, hosted by the Genoa Chamber of Commerce. For the whole region it gives 5,306,612 arrivals and 15,963,328 nights in hotels and other accommodation structures in 2025. Arrivals rose 1.37% and nights fell 1.14% on 2024.

The region also counts furnished apartments for tourist use, known by the abbreviation AAUT, which cover private short-term rentals. In 2025 they added 960,479 arrivals and 4,739,075 nights in Liguria. With them, regional nights reach 20,702,403, which the observatory reports as 4.6% more than in 2024. The document gives no 2024 figure for rentals, so the 4.6% cannot be split between hotels and rentals from it. The structures-only fall and the combined rise are different series and should never be quoted as one trend.

For the province of La Spezia, structures recorded 1,053,873 arrivals in 2025, down 2.45%, and 2,894,689 nights, down 2.06%. Rentals added 268,256 arrivals, of which 213,053 were from abroad, and 934,683 nights, of which 756,006 were foreign. Together that is 3,829,372 nights. Rentals took 24.4% of the province's nights, and foreign guests took 80.9% of rental nights (our arithmetic). The province had 7,253 active rental units.

The provincial figures do not measure the five villages. The province includes the city of La Spezia, Portovenere, Lerici, Sarzana, Levanto and inland valleys. The observatory's 2025 summary has no comune-level or Cinque Terre figures, and we found no comune tables for Riomaggiore, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare for 2023, 2024 or 2025 from the Region, ISTAT or the Park. Even the village series counts nights, not people. Day visitors who sleep elsewhere, in La Spezia, Florence, Pisa or Genoa, are absent from every one of these counts, and so are cruise passengers.

Reported falls in 2025 with no published table

In August and September 2025, 9colonne and Travelbook reported that the Cinque Terre had lost overnight stays. 9colonne (28 August 2025) gave about 50,000 fewer nights across the area in a period it described as "less than two half-years", from data it attributed to the provincial tourism observatory. Its comune figures were Vernazza down 8,400 (16.31%), Riomaggiore down 9,000 (8.33%), Monterosso down 2,800 (2.47%) and Levanto down more than 17,000 (9%). Those four add up to about 37,200 (our arithmetic), and the article does not explain the gap to 50,000. Travelbook (10 September 2025) dated the comparison to June 2024 against June 2025, citing La Repubblica. We did not find the observatory table behind any of these numbers.

The boat operators gave a sharper figure. Rudy Biassoli, president of the Consorzio marittimo turistico Cinque Terre Golfo dei Poeti, told La Nazione (11 January 2026) that presences had fallen 20% to 25% compared with previous years. He said daily tickets sold fell about 25% and pre-booked groups about 5%. He did not define presences, and the article gives no count behind the percentages.

The Park has offered only impressions. After the early-June weekend in 2025, Viviani said visitor numbers were lower than in the same period a year earlier and lower than on 1 May, according to La Nazione (3 June 2025). No totals were given.

These four statements cover different things over different periods. The official provincial figure is a full-year fall of 2.06% in nights in accommodation structures. The 9colonne figures are nights over an unclear period with no published table. The operator's 20% to 25% describes his own passengers. The Park's remark covers one weekend. None of them measures day visitors. 9colonne's English headline called the falls a backfire of measures against overtourism. The data published cannot show whether visitors fell or why.

Boats, trains and cruise ships

Transport operators hold the most direct counts of people arriving, and almost none of them is published. The 384,000 boat passengers in 2025 come from one consortium, as its president told La Nazione (11 January 2026). The figure covers tickets and groups and has no comparison year. The article does not say whether a return trip counts once or twice.

The railway carries most visitors, according to the Park data cited by Finestre, and we found no passenger or station count for the five villages from Trenitalia or RFI. The only numbers are peak loads from the MIC-HUB study as reported by Finestre in 2023. They describe up to 800 people on a peak train, up to 320 on the platform at Monterosso and 200 at Manarola and Vernazza. In May 2026 Trenitalia said trains were full and no stops were skipped, with no figures (La Nazione, 4 May 2026).

Cruise passengers are counted at the port, and the count stops there. The Port System Authority of the Eastern Ligurian Sea reported nearly 760,000 cruise passengers in total in 2025, up 13.6%, of whom 736,000 disembarked at La Spezia, up 16.8% (release of 9 March 2026). The release does not mention the Cinque Terre. Shore excursions from La Spezia also go to Florence, Pisa and Portovenere, and we found no figure for how many cruise passengers reach the villages. The 736,000 is a port count. It cannot be added to any village total. Finestre's figure of about 1,500 cruise passengers gives no unit and cannot be used. Port-by-port figures are in our analysis of Italy's cruise statistics.

Counters on the trails, and the caps they support

The Park does count people on some paths. In April 2025 it cited pedestrian counters showing that over 70% of hikers already walk the Monterosso to Vernazza stretch in that direction (TravelQuotidiano, 15 April 2025). It made the path one-way, Monterosso to Vernazza, from 9:00 to 14:00 on 11 spring days in 2025. After the early-June weekend, Viviani said the threshold of 600 passages an hour, which he described as the path's maximum carrying capacity, had not been exceeded on any day (La Nazione, 3 June 2025). The counter readings themselves have not been published. The only counter totals in print are the 2023 trail figures reported through Finestre.

The Via dell'Amore, between Riomaggiore and Manarola, has the most detailed rules. It closed after a landslide in 2012. The full path reopened to residents on 27 July 2024 and to tourists on 9 August 2024. Tourists booked, walked one way toward Manarola and entered in groups of 100 every 15 minutes, up to 400 an hour, paying EUR 10 to EUR 15 on the busiest days on top of a EUR 7.50 card (Il Post, 27 July 2024). Falling rocks closed it again in October 2024. It reopened on 14 February 2025 after EUR 800,000 of safety works, with booking and a paid ticket from the next day (Il Post, 14 February 2025).

The official card site now lists access to the trails and the Via dell'Amore as part of the trekking card, with a link to book. It says paths may be restricted for weather and safety, maintenance and the management of high visitor flows. It does not state a 2026 hourly limit. Every booked slot is a count, and the Park has published none of them.

Rules for guided groups are spreading between the villages. Vernazza plans to limit organized groups to 25 people from 1 January 2027, require earpieces for groups of more than ten, ban megaphones and bar groups from stopping in named streets, through an amendment to article 68 of its urban police regulation (Il Fatto Quotidiano, 13 May 2026). The council was due to vote when the reports appeared, and we found no published text of an approved ordinance. Riomaggiore has applied similar rules on a trial basis. These rules govern the size of a group. They do not limit how many people visit.

No source we read describes a cap on entry to the park or to any village. The caps that exist apply to one path or one hour: 400 an hour on the Via dell'Amore in 2024 and 600 passages an hour on the Monterosso to Vernazza stretch. The same pattern runs through Italy's other crowd measures. Our analyses of Dolomites overtourism and Italy's capped beaches found rules and prices published and the effects mostly unmeasured.

An EUR 800,000 portal, promised since 2024

The plan to count visitors properly has been announced several times. La Nazione (10 January 2026) reported that the Ministry of Tourism, through its national tourism fund, would provide EUR 400,000 and the Park EUR 400,000 of its own funds, for EUR 800,000 in total. The portal would let visitors choose days and time slots when crowding is lower. It would use counting devices and cameras in the park, link to the existing counters on the trails and to the card sales system, draw on mobility data for the wider area, and use machine learning to forecast numbers. Viviani called it an operational and predictive tool. The article gives no start date and no visitor counts. We found no ministry decree, Park release or tender for it.

The idea predates that funding. Quality Travel (11 April 2024) described a digital plan for 2024 and 2025 with a mobility portal and a real-time dashboard. In May 2025 the Park said it would "soon" launch a mobility portal with updated data on flows, access and environmental conditions (Quotidiano.net, 4 May 2025).

The latest status is a plan. On 29 September 2026 Città della Spezia reported that the Park had renewed its European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas for 2026 to 2030. The Europarc evaluation committee gave its visitor flow management the maximum score and cited the Cinque Terre Card. According to the paper, the new plan has 34 actions, among them a predictive digital platform to analyze crowding and weather data. We have not seen the plan itself, and that this platform is the EUR 800,000 portal is our inference. The article describes no counter or portal in operation and gives no visitor figures.

Card money is reported faster than card counts. QdS (26 July 2025) reported that the Park passed EUR 2.4 million of card proceeds to local councils, with Riomaggiore, Vernazza and Monterosso each receiving more than EUR 700,000. The report gave no sales count, and the latest published sales are for 2022. Once the portal runs, it will hold the first systematic count of visitors to the villages, day visitors included. Its forecasts will start without a published visitor baseline to compare against.

UNESCO asks for limits, and publishes no counts

The coast is a World Heritage property, listed as Portovenere, Cinque Terre, and the Islands (Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto), property 826, under criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). UNESCO describes about 15 kilometers of coast between Levanto and La Spezia, from Punta Mesco to Punta Persico. Its page says there are "strict limitations on the establishment of tourist facilities" and that mechanisms linking tourism to landscape maintenance have been activated.

The UNESCO record contains no visitor figure. Its documents page lists state of conservation reports for 2012 and 2013 only. The property's justification rests on the terraces, and UNESCO notes that their upkeep depends on farmers. Nobody publishes how many people walk past those terraces each year, or how that number compares with any limit.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers have no official crowd data to plan with, and the measures that exist are specific. The Via dell'Amore needs a booked slot even with a card, and the card site warns that access can be limited when visitor flows are high. On busy spring days the Monterosso to Vernazza path has run one-way from 9:00 to 14:00. Trains between Corniglia and La Spezia are suspended for 48 hours on the weekends of 14 and 15 November and 19 and 20 December 2026 and 9 and 10 January and 6 and 7 February 2027, and between Levanto and La Spezia from 22:30 to 6:30 on some nights; the card site lists the details. The only published crowd figures are 2023 peak loads of up to 800 people on a train. Our Cinque Terre travel guide, things to do in Cinque Terre and where to stay in Cinque Terre cover timing, trails and bases.

Tourism businesses and investors have no published measure of the day-visitor market and only dated figures for the overnight one. The village series gives 604,349 nights in Monterosso, Riomaggiore and Vernazza in 2022, 4.4% above 2019 (our arithmetic). The 2025 figures are provincial: 2,894,689 nights in accommodation structures, down 2.06%, and 934,683 in private rentals, 24.4% of the province's nights. The comune declines of 2025 rest on press reports with no published table, and the boat operator's 20% to 25% fall is his own statement. The 3.4 million is an estimate with no published method and should not support a forecast. The assessment would change with any of four publications: comune-level nights for 2023 to 2025, card sales for 2023 to 2025, counter totals, or data from the portal once it runs. For context on how other Italian destinations are measured, see our analysis of Lake Como and Lake Garda visitor statistics.

Journalists and analysts can cite these with their sources: about 2.5 million visitors in 2015 as the Park's own statement, method not given; about 3.4 million visitor arrivals in 2023 as a Park-commissioned estimate by MIC-HUB; 1,136,665 Cinque Terre Cards sold in 2022 as tickets, not people; 604,349 nights in registered accommodation in the three village comuni in 2022; 2,894,689 nights in accommodation structures in the province of La Spezia in 2025; 384,000 boat passengers in 2025 as one operator's figure; and 736,000 cruise passengers disembarked at La Spezia as a port count. The box above lists the uses to avoid. This article adds the Cinque Terre to a finding repeated across this series. Italian authorities publish rules, prices and revenue for crowded places. In the Cinque Terre they also publish ticket sales and overnight stays, years late, and no count of day visitors at all.