French tourists in Italy: 12.1 million trips, almost half of them day trips, and €4.6 billion spent

Five counts of one neighbour

The Bank of Italy's Indagine sul turismo internazionale is the main Italian count of trips into the country. Its unit is the trip, which it calls "viaggiatori" and defines as the number of crossings of the Italian border. It covers overnight visitors and same-day visitors, and it counts residents of France whatever their nationality. On that basis France supplied 12.1 million of the 92.2 million foreign trips into Italy in 2025, or 13.1%. Germany supplied 13.1 million. No other country came close; Switzerland was third with 7.1 million.

The survey says how the Bank expands its sample. Since February 2025 the Bank has done that expansion itself. Before then it was done by the firms that carry out the interviews and counts at border points. The Bank does not say how crossings at road frontiers are weighted against airports, and it publishes no French row by mode of transport. For a neighbouring market with a long land border, that is the main limit on what the French figures can show.

The ISTAT and Eurostat accommodation series counts check-ins. It records each stay at a hotel, a holiday rental business or a campsite that reports to ISTAT. Stays with friends, in owned holiday homes or in unregistered lets fall outside it. Eurostat's tables, updated on 12 October 2026, show 6,560,056 arrivals and 19,411,857 nights by residents of France in Italian registered accommodation in 2025. Each check-in lasted about 3.0 nights, by our calculation.

The third count comes from France. INSEE's household travel survey, which Eurostat publishes as the French tourism demand series, covers residents of metropolitan France aged 15 and over and counts trips with at least one night, for personal or business reasons. It recorded 4,475,598 trips to Italy in 2025 and 26,952,717 nights, including stays with family and in second homes. That is about 6.0 nights per trip, by our calculation. Children under 15 are outside this count.

The fourth count is airport traffic. ENAC, Italy's civil aviation authority, puts traffic between Italy and France at 13.7 million passengers in 2025. Airport passengers count each leg in both directions, and an Italian flying to Paris counts the same as a French visitor flying to Rome. The fifth set of counts comes from Italy's regions, each on its own basis and year.

These numbers belong side by side and never in one calculation. The survey implies about 31.4 million French nights in Italy in 2025, our derivation from 6.4 million overnight trips of 4.9 nights each. France's survey gives 26.95 million. Registered accommodation gives 19.41 million. All three are correct for what they cover, and the differences come from who is counted and where they sleep.

The accommodation series has a further problem. ISTAT's Storie di dati release of 17 July 2026 says the 2025 data include nights in private rentals run on a non-business basis for the first time. With them, Italy's total exceeds 535 million nights. Without them it would be 481 million. Eurostat had not restated 2024 by its 12 October update, and its data carry no break flag. On the published figures French nights rose 31.1% in 2025 and arrivals 22.4%, against 18.8% for all foreign nights. None of those is growth on a like-for-like basis, and no French figure without the private rentals has been published. Our Italy tourism record watch for 2026 covers the same break for the national total.

Almost half the trips are day trips

The Bank of Italy's French series for 2023 to 2025 shows steady growth in trips and faster growth in holiday spending. Total trips went from 11.2 million in 2023 to 11.5 million in 2024 and 12.1 million in 2025. Trips with an overnight stay went from 6.3 million to 6.1 million and then 6.4 million, up 4.8% in the latest year.

The difference between the two series is the same-day count. By our arithmetic it was about 4.9 million in 2023, 5.4 million in 2024 and 5.7 million in 2025, each with a margin of about 0.1 million because the Bank rounds its trip counts. In 2025 that is about 47% of French trips, between 46% and 48% given the rounding. For all foreign visitors the same-day share was 33%, and French trips made up about 18.5% of all foreign same-day trips into Italy. The Bank publishes no French same-day figure and no breakdown by crossing. The land border makes day visits from Nice, Menton, Chamonix or Briançon plausible, but the survey does not say who made them.

The day trips show up in the spending. Spending by French visitors who stayed overnight was €4,162 million in 2025, up 4.1%. The remainder of total spending, €486 million, belongs to same-day visitors, our calculation. That is about €85 per same-day trip, up from about €76 in 2024. Both figures are our derivations from rounded trip counts.

Across all trips, French visitors spent about €384 each, against about €615 for all foreign visitors. For overnight trips the figure was about €650, against about €889 for all foreign visitors, about €801 for the UK and about €917 for Germany. These are our calculations, and they show how much the short French stay pulls the average down.

Spending per night tells a similar story at a smaller scale. French overnight visitors spent €129.4 a night in 2023, €129.5 in 2024 and €132.6 in 2025, a rise of 2.4% in the latest year by our calculation. The all-foreign average was €139.1, so the French figure sits about 4.7% below it. In the Bank's ten-country table the US spent €178.1 a night, the UK €151.5, Switzerland €142.0 and Germany €140.2. Spain, at €110.3, spent less.

The average overnight stay has barely moved. It was 4.9 nights in 2023, 5.1 in 2024 and 4.9 in 2025. That is slightly shorter than the UK's 5.3 nights and well below Germany's 6.5 and the US's 10.2.

The split by purpose shows where the growth went. Spending on trips for personal reasons rose 9.5%, to €4,079 million. Within that, holiday spending rose 18.5%, from €2,515 million to €2,980 million. None of Italy's other three largest markets grew as fast. UK holiday spending rose 16.0%, German 12.3%, American 1.6% and that of all foreign visitors 12.2%. Holidays took 64.1% of French spending in 2025, against 52.7% in 2023, both shares by our calculation.

The Bank publishes no French business row. Subtracting personal-trip spending from the total leaves €1,051 million in 2023, €686 million in 2024 and €569 million in 2025. That residual includes business travel and anything else outside personal motives. It fell 17.1% in 2025 and about 46% over two years, by our arithmetic. Across all foreign visitors the Bank's work and business spending fell 20.3% in 2025.

Third in registered nights, with the shortest stays

On registered nights France sits behind two much larger markets. In 2025 German guests logged 71.05 million nights in Italian hotels, rentals and campsites, and American guests 28.78 million. French guests logged 19.41 million, the UK 17.34 million and Switzerland 13.51 million. German nights were about 3.7 times the French total, by our calculation.

The 2024 ranking was the same. Eurostat gives France 14,802,365 nights in 2024 and the UK 14,042,660. ISTAT's own release on 2024, the Statistica Today of 9 March 2026, says in its text that France and the UK held third and fourth place. Its ranking table, as we read it twice, prints the two numbers against the opposite country labels. Eurostat's country codes and ISTAT's sentence agree, so we treat the table labels as transposed. For the same reason we do not quote the table's 2014 figures for France.

The comparable years show slow growth. Between 2019 and 2024, before the basis change, French nights rose from 13.84 million to 14.80 million, an increase of 6.9%. Nights by all foreign guests rose 15.1%. France's share of foreign nights went from 6.27% in 2019 to 5.83% in 2024, and its share of all nights in 2024, Italians included, was about 3.2%. All of these shares are our calculations from Eurostat.

In 2025 the French share of foreign nights rose to 6.44%. That figure sits on the new basis, which adds private non-business rentals for every market. The French rise implied by the published nights, 31.1%, was faster than the 18.8% for all foreign guests. That could reflect heavier French use of the newly counted rentals, faster underlying growth, or both. The data cannot tell them apart. France's own survey offers one check. It shows French nights in Italy up 5.0% in 2025 and trips up 2.2%, on a basis that already included every type of accommodation.

The registered stay is short. Each French check-in lasted 2.76 nights in 2024 and 2.96 nights in 2025, by our calculation. American guests stayed 3.01 nights per check-in in 2025, just above the French figure, British guests about 3.7 and German guests about 4.7. The data do not say why. Short trips across the Alps and touring trips with several stops would both shorten the average.

Getting there: Paris flights, one train line and the Alpine tunnels

No official source gives a mode split for French trips to Italy. The Bank of Italy surveys at road, rail, air and sea crossings but publishes no French breakdown by mode. A country sheet published by the Naples tourism body gives air 40%, car 35% and train 20% for French travellers, without a source or a year, and we have not used it. So the familiar idea of France as a drive market for Italy cannot be measured from the data we found.

Air traffic is the best documented link. ENAC's Dati di traffico 2025 gives traffic with France as 13.7 million passengers on page 7, up 6.1%. On page 35 it gives the same 13.7 million, up 0.3%, and 13.9% of Italy's traffic with EU countries, second behind Spain at 22.5 million. On page 16 it rounds France to 14 million, 9% of all international traffic and third behind Spain and the UK. The two growth rates imply 2024 bases of about 12.9 million and about 13.7 million, by our calculation, so both cannot be right. Page 7 itself describes the value as stable. We quote 13.7 million and treat the growth rate as unsettled. Our article on Italy's airport passenger traffic in 2025 explains the ENAC series and the version we used.

Paris dominates the route table. Three of Italy's ten busiest EU routes in 2025 linked Italian airports with Paris. Rome Fiumicino to Paris Orly carried 1,258,432 passengers, up 6.6%, and ranked fourth. Rome Fiumicino to Paris Charles de Gaulle carried 1,039,102, up 7.4%, and ranked fifth. Milan Malpensa to Paris Charles de Gaulle carried 850,656, down 5.4%, and fell three places to tenth. Together the three routes carried about 23% of all France-Italy passengers, by our calculation. ENAC prints no figures for Nice, Lyon, Marseille or other French airports.

Airlines describe the rest of the network in their own terms. easyJet said on 23 June 2026 that it was the largest airline by capacity between France and Italy that summer, with capacity up 7%, 48 routes and 3.8 million passengers in its 2025 financial year. It opened Nice to Cagliari and Bordeaux to Cagliari the same day. These are company figures.

Rail has only just recovered. Trenitalia France resumed its Paris to Milan service on 1 April 2025, after about 19 months of interruption caused by a landslide in the Maurienne valley. Its 2026 press kit gives two round trips a day, a journey time under seven hours and stops at Lyon, Chambéry, Modane and Turin. It publishes no passenger numbers for the route.

The Mont Blanc road tunnel has been closed for long stretches. The Valle d'Aosta statistical yearbook, using data from the tunnel's operating consortium, counts 1,061,195 cars and motorcycles through the Mont Blanc tunnel in 2024, against 1,315,528 in 2019. The tunnel was closed for 105 consecutive days in 2024 for maintenance, and the counts cover every nationality in both directions, so the fall is not a measure of French tourism. ATMB, the French operator, reports a further closure of 102 days in 2025, from 1 September to 12 December, and an average of 5,577 drivers a day outside it. We found no published counts for the Fréjus tunnel or the coastal crossing at Ventimiglia.

France also checks its border with Italy. According to the European Commission's list of notifications, France has reintroduced controls at all its internal borders, including Italy, from 1 May to 31 October 2026 and again from 1 November 2026 to 30 April 2027. It cites terrorist threats, smuggling networks and international events. We found no data on crossing times or volumes, and the notifications say nothing about tourism.

Where the French go: Liguria, Sicily and Sardinia

The Bank of Italy publishes no French breakdown by region, city or type of accommodation. Regional observatories fill part of the gap, on different bases and for different years. Their figures cannot be added up and do not sum to the national total.

Of the regions with published French figures, Liguria has the highest French share. The regional tourism observatory counted 491,685 French arrivals and 1,072,019 French nights in hotels and other registered establishments in 2025, down 0.59% and 1.01%. France was the first foreign market by arrivals, at 18.9% of foreign arrivals, and second by nights after Germany, at 14.6%, both shares by our calculation from the report's totals. Furnished tourist flats are reported separately with no country split, so French stays in them are missing. ISTAT's 2024 release also names France as the main market in some provinces of the North-West.

In Sicily France is the first foreign market. The Region's Rapporto 2024 counts 407,022 French arrivals and 1,276,381 French nights in 2024, 14.2% of foreign arrivals and 14.7% of foreign nights. French nights rose about 13% on 2023. The report covers hotels and other registered establishments and gives short-term rentals separately, with no country split. No French figure for Sicily in 2025 has been published that we could find. Our Sicily tourism statistics set out the island's counts and gaps.

Sardinia shows the fastest French growth of the regions we checked. The regional observatory's 2025 report, from the ROSS1000 system and extracted on 18 June 2026, gives 431,205 French arrivals, up 22.4%, and 1,608,906 nights, up 21.6%. France was the second foreign market after Germany. By our calculation it took 14.9% of foreign arrivals and 13.2% of foreign nights. The report's totals include private lets, but it does not say how they affect the country rows, so the French rise may partly reflect wider coverage.

In Tuscany France ranks lower. Toscana Promozione's provisional bulletin for 2025, which excludes tourist rentals, ranks France third among foreign markets by arrivals, at about 555,000, and fourth by nights, at 1.5 million. French guests stayed 2.7 days on average.

Naples has a widely repeated figure with no stated base. Qualitytravel reported on 12 March 2026 that the city's urban tourism observatory found France at 10.7% of "le principali provenienze estere" from February 2025 to February 2026, behind the UK and Spain. The article does not say whether the shares are of arrivals, nights or foreign visitors, or how the data were collected, and we could not find the observatory's report. Our piece on Naples tourism statistics explains why the city's figures need care.

Italy, the French favourite? What France's data say

France's survey ranks Italy second. In 2025 French residents made 35,502,087 trips abroad with at least one night. Spain took 6,311,498 of them, 17.8% by our calculation, and Italy 4,475,598, or 12.6%. Belgium, Germany and the UK followed. Neither the Spanish nor the Italian value carries a low-reliability flag.

Italy has grown as a French destination over the longer run. French trips to Italy rose 28.5% between 2019 and 2025, and nights 20.0%, by our calculation. The rise in 2025 was smaller, 2.2% for trips and 5.0% for nights.

easyJet's release of 23 June 2026 said Italy was the first tourist destination of French people travelling abroad for the third year running, citing an Ipsos survey of 2026. The release gives no sample, question or method. A survey of preferences can differ from a count of trips. On trips, the official French series puts Spain clearly ahead.

The claims that need a unit

Most of what circulates about the French in Italy holds for one unit and fails for another. France is Italy's second market by trips, the Bank of Italy's count. It is third by registered nights and fourth by spending. ENAC makes it second among EU partners and third overall by airport passengers. The Ministry of Tourism's summer 2026 forecast put France at 5% of summer 2025 travellers, second to Germany at 6%, without saying what the base was.

The same Ministry report mentions France in two other places that are easy to misread. Its growth of 2% in direct scheduled seats and its average accommodation rate of €134 refer to France as a competing destination for summer 2026. Neither describes French travel to Italy. One qualitative line on the market says French visitors in summer 2025 leaned towards art cities.

No official French figure for 2026 exists yet. The Bank of Italy's monthly commentaries split foreign visitors only into EU and non-EU groups, and Eurostat publishes no monthly French series for Italy.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers coming from France have more ways in than two years ago. The Paris to Milan train runs again, twice a day in under seven hours, and three of Italy's ten busiest EU air routes run to Paris. Drivers should check the Mont Blanc tunnel's works calendar, which closed it for 105 days in 2024 and 102 days in 2025, and should carry identity documents, since France has notified border controls with Italy until 30 April 2027. The one thing most visitors miss is how French Liguria and Sicily already are. French guests are the first foreign market in both, and in Liguria almost one foreign arrival in five is French. Our Sicily travel guide covers where to base a first trip.

Tourism businesses and investors have a market that is large in trips and modest in value per trip. French spending reached €4,648 million in 2025, holiday spending rose 18.5% and spending per night rose 2.4%, yet the French spent about €384 per trip against €615 for all foreign visitors. Close to half of French trips involve no night in Italy. Liguria, Sicily and Sardinia rely on France far more than the national share of 6.4% of foreign registered nights suggests. Sardinia's 22% rise in French arrivals is the strongest regional signal, on a basis that includes private lets. A French figure for registered nights on the old basis, a restated 2024 series, or a Bank of Italy breakdown by crossing would change this assessment.

Journalists and analysts should name the unit with every French figure, as the box above sets out. ENAC's growth rate for France remains unsettled in the version of its report we read. Across the four source-market articles in this series the pattern repeats, with good annual counts in incompatible units, a 2025 accommodation basis that cannot be compared with 2024, and no official count for the current year. France adds the largest same-day component of any market we have measured, about 5.7 million trips in 2025 by our calculation, so a count of French visitors who stayed the night should use the 6.4 million overnight trips.