Key takeaways
- The Bank of Italy estimated from mobile-phone data that presences of tourists from the Middle East in Italy fell about 35% in March 2026, 60% in April and 20% in May, against the same months of 2025; it is the only official figure that links a fall in visitors to Italy to the conflict, and it links them by timing, with no estimate of what would have happened otherwise (Indagine sul turismo internazionale, 26 June 2026, p.5).
- The Bank's estimate covers tourists from the Middle East, with the 60% fall in April only; headlines that reported it as the Persian Gulf (Affaritaliani, 29 June; Italpress, 3 July 2026) narrowed the region, which the Bank names only to describe the conflict.
- Foreign nights in Italian accommodation rose 5.8% in March-August 2026, from 193.0 million to 204.2 million, while domestic nights rose 0.4% (Eurostat tour_occ_nim, updated 30 October 2026; changes are our calculation).
- ISTAT's provisional Q2 2026 figures show nights up 3.9% and arrivals down 0.8%; non-resident nights rose 4.6% and non-resident arrivals 0.8%, and June foreign nights fell 0.6% (ISTAT, 14 September 2026).
- Spending by visitors from outside the EU grew 0.4% in March-May 2026 against 4.1% for EU visitors, then rose 4.6% in Q2 and 6.8% in May-July; none of the Bank of Italy's five monthly notes for March to July mentions the Middle East or the conflict.
- A rise in national totals cannot show what would have happened without the war: February had the Milano Cortina Olympics, Easter fell on 5 April 2026 against 20 April 2025, the 2025 base includes the Jubilee year, and ISTAT's Q1 release does not reconcile with Eurostat.
- The estimate of over 3,500 bookings at risk, made for Assoviaggi Confesercenti, was a 30-day projection mostly of Italians' trips to the region, and AGI's figure of over 170,000 arrivals and 2.5 million nights a year from five countries affected by the conflict carries no source or base year (AGI, 2 March 2026); ENIT's 964,440 Middle Eastern arrivals for 2025 was a forecast made in April 2025.
- Losses reported by Italian travel agencies, such as Fiavet's over €222 million, concern Italians' cancelled trips abroad and say nothing about tourism into Italy.
Presences of tourists from the Middle East in Italy fell about 60% in April 2026 compared with April 2025. The Bank of Italy published that estimate on 26 June, using mobile-phone data, alongside falls of about 35% in March and 20% in May. Over the same three months, foreign nights in Italian accommodation rose 9.1% by our calculation from Eurostat's monthly series.
Both statements are true, and they measure different things. The Bank's estimate covers one region of origin, a small share of Italy's visitors, during the three months after US and Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February led states in the region to close their airspace and EASA to advise against flying it. The national series cover every visitor, from every market, in months that also held the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, an early Easter and a comparison with the 2025 Jubilee year.
What nobody has published is the link between them. No official source has estimated how much tourism to Italy the war removed, or whether it diverted travellers towards Italy from elsewhere. This article sets out what each source measured, which widely shared figures fail, and why a rise in the totals cannot settle the question in either direction. It uses the national nights series from our Italy tourism record watch for 2026. It measures tourism, not safety.
What happened to flights into Italy
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency issued Conflict Zone Information Bulletin 2026-03 on 28 February 2026, covering the airspace of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Its fifth revision, of 27 March, extended it to 10 April unless reviewed earlier. It recommends that operators do not fly at any level in the airspace of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with a carve-out for parts of Saudi Arabia and Oman above flight level 320. Italy is not on the list. Later revisions were not checked for this article.
Airlines suspended routes within days. LaPresse reported on 2 March that Emirates had suspended all Dubai operations until the afternoon of 3 March and Etihad all Abu Dhabi flights until the same day. ITA Airways suspended Tel Aviv until 8 March, Dubai until 4 March and Riyadh from 2 to 4 March. Rome Fiumicino cancelled 45 flights on 2 March out of about 800 a day, Milan Malpensa 14 and Bergamo three, according to the same report.
The disruption lasted beyond those first days. Affaritaliani, citing IATA on 29 June, reported that about 85% of flights to and from Persian Gulf airports were cancelled in the first seven days of March, that fewer than half of planned connections were running at the end of the month, and that almost one flight in four planned for May was cancelled. We did not open the IATA source. On 18 April Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Iran had announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed again, AGI reported. When Gulf carriers restored full schedules to Italy, and whether the conflict has formally ended, could not be established from the sources opened.
Gulf hubs matter beyond the Gulf. Many travellers from South and East Asia and Australia reach Italy through Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi. Italian airport statistics record only the last leg of a journey and do not split passengers by country of residence, as our analysis of Italy's airport passenger traffic in 2025 explains, so the number of connecting passengers who were stranded or rerouted is not known.
The one official estimate: visitors from the Middle East
The Bank of Italy's annual report on international tourism, published on 26 June 2026, contains the only official figure that links a fall in visitors to Italy to the conflict. Its summary says that the growth in foreign spending in the first quarter, 5.4% on a year earlier, was supported by the Olympics and "parzialmente compensati dal calo degli arrivi dal Medio Oriente", partly offset by the fall in arrivals from the Middle East, from the start of the conflict in the Persian Gulf. On page 5 it gives the figures. According to estimates from mobile-phone data, presences of tourists from the area fell by about 35% in March, 60% in April and 20% in May, compared with the same months of 2025.
Four features of that estimate limit what it can show. The figures count presences, tourists counted as present in Italy, although the surrounding text speaks of arrivals; they are not registered nights. The region is the Middle East; the Bank uses "Persian Gulf" only to name the conflict. The report gives no country list, no baseline level and no figure for June or later. And it describes no method beyond the phrase "dati di telefonia mobile". The link to the war is one of timing. The fall began with the conflict, and the Bank does not estimate what would have happened without it.
Calendar timing may also play a part. Eid al-Fitr began on 30 March 2025 and on 20 March 2026 in the UAE, according to Khaleej Times and What's On Dubai, so holiday travel around the festival fell in different weeks of the two years. That alone can move Gulf travel between March and April in a year-on-year comparison. The Bank does not discuss it.
The Bank's methods paper on mobile-phone data, dated 28 January 2026, fills in part of the method. It names Vodafone as the operator, with 27.5% of Italian SIM cards in September 2023, and scales results up from that share. Inbound visitors are assigned to the country that issued their SIM card. The paper counts SIM cards, not people, and notes that travellers who buy a local SIM or eSIM are missed. It does not mention Middle Eastern or Gulf countries. Whether the spring 2026 estimate used exactly this method is not stated.
The size of the market that fell is also unknown. The Bank's tables have no Middle East row; its 2025 report said only that the weight of spending by travellers from the Persian Gulf countries had grown, especially from the United Arab Emirates. ENIT's release for the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, dated 29 April 2025, said Italy was "expected" to record 964,440 arrivals from Middle Eastern markets in 2025, including 310,302 from the UAE. That was a forecast, based on airport flows from an unnamed provider, and we found no published outturn. AGI, reporting an Assoviaggi Confesercenti estimate on 2 March 2026, gave averages of over 170,000 arrivals and 2.5 million nights a year from five countries affected by the conflict, under a heading on incoming tourism, with no source line or base year.
The two figures differ in scope and by a factor of more than five, and neither is an official count. On the smaller one, 2.5 million nights would be under 0.5% of the 535,463,245 nights Eurostat records for Italy in 2025, by our calculation. ENIT's larger forecast would imply a higher share, but it gives no nights. Either way the market is small enough that the national totals can neither confirm nor rule out the fall.
One commercial series points the same way for high spenders. Global Blue, presenting its Luxury Shopping Insights on 22 October as reported by Teleborsa, said Gulf luxury tax-free shoppers fell 37% in Italy and 28% in Europe in the first half of 2026, crediting the counts to Amadeus data. For July and August Teleborsa gives -13% for Europe and -20% for Italy, without saying whether the Italian figure refers to shoppers or air traffic. Global Blue attributed the drop to an early Ramadan as well as tensions in the Middle East. These are shoppers claiming tax refunds on luxury goods, not tourists.
The national totals rose through the same months
ISTAT's provisional figures for April to June 2026, published on 14 September, show 147,873,640 nights in Italian accommodation, up 3.9%, and 46,940,655 arrivals, down 0.8%. Non-residents logged 91,127,005 nights, up 4.6%, and 27,266,324 arrivals, up 0.8%. Residents' nights rose 2.7% and their arrivals fell 3.0%. ISTAT states that the changes are calculated on a consistent basis for both years, including the private non-business rentals that entered the series in 2025.
The months moved apart. Nights rose 4.0% in April and 8.8% in May. In June they rose 0.6% while arrivals fell 4.9%, and non-resident nights fell 0.6%. ISTAT's release does not mention the war, the Middle East or Easter.
Eurostat's monthly series, built from ISTAT data and updated on 30 October 2026, runs to August. Its April to June foreign nights equal ISTAT's non-resident figure exactly. Foreign nights rose 10.6% in March, 6.9% in April, 10.1% in May, fell 0.6% in June, and rose 5.7% in July and 6.8% in August. From March to August they totalled 204.2 million against 193.0 million a year earlier, a rise of 5.8%. Domestic nights rose 0.4%. Foreign guests accounted for about 95% of the extra nights. All of those changes are our calculations from Eurostat's figures.
| Month | Foreign 2025 (m) | Foreign 2026 (m) | Change (%) | Domestic 2025 (m) | Domestic 2026 (m) | Change (%) | Also in that month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 10.890 | 10.374 | -4.7 | 11.541 | 11.070 | -4.1 | 2025 base: Jubilee year under way |
| February | 12.774 | 13.300 | 4.1 | 9.942 | 9.952 | 0.1 | Milano Cortina Olympics; war begins 28 Feb |
| March | 13.982 | 15.464 | 10.6 | 11.345 | 11.475 | 1.1 | Gulf airspace closures; Middle East presences about -35%; Eid al-Fitr 20 Mar 2026 (30 Mar in 2025); run-up to Easter 2026 |
| April | 21.620 | 23.102 | 6.9 | 13.165 | 13.062 | -0.8 | Easter 5 Apr 2026 vs 20 Apr 2025; Middle East presences about -60% |
| May | 27.352 | 30.114 | 10.1 | 15.419 | 16.400 | 6.4 | Middle East presences about -20% |
| June | 38.138 | 37.912 | -0.6 | 26.651 | 27.285 | 2.4 | No Middle East estimate published from June |
| July | 47.804 | 50.535 | 5.7 | 40.079 | 38.844 | -3.1 | |
| August | 44.100 | 47.105 | 6.8 | 51.530 | 51.701 | 0.3 | |
| March-August total | 192.996 | 204.231 | 5.8 | 158.190 | 158.767 | 0.4 | Foreign guests about 95% of the extra nights |
The first quarter is contested. ISTAT's release of 26 May put non-resident nights up 12.3% and residents' up 2.2%, with foreign nights up 17.4% in March. Eurostat's January to March figures show foreign nights up 4.0% and domestic nights down 1.0%. ISTAT's 2026 total of 71.6 million matches Eurostat's, so the gap sits in the 2025 base, which ISTAT's figure implies was about 66.6 million against Eurostat's 70.5 million, by our calculation. A comparison with a 2025 base that left out the private rentals would produce a gap of this kind, but the release does not say so. This article uses Eurostat for January to March.
Our analysis of Italy and Spain compares the two countries on the same Eurostat series. Over January to August 2026 Italy's nights rose 2.87%, Spain's 1.14% and France's 0.41%, on the series as updated on 22 October. That ranking says nothing about why.
Spending rose, and airports from June
The Bank of Italy's monthly commentaries track foreign visitors' spending in Italy, split only into EU and non-EU visitors. Spending was €3.1 billion in March, almost 1% lower than a year earlier, while the first quarter as a whole rose 5.4%. April brought €4.5 billion, up 2.1%, May €5.4 billion, up 4.3%, June €6.8 billion, up 4.8%, and July €8.3 billion, up 6.8%.
The non-EU line is where a long-haul effect would show first, and it slowed in spring. Over the three months to April, spending by non-EU visitors rose 0.9% against 7.9% for EU visitors. Over March to May it rose 0.4% against 4.1%. Then it turned. In the second quarter non-EU spending rose 4.6% and EU spending 3.3%, and the Bank said the rise came mainly from business travel. Over May to July non-EU spending rose 6.8% and EU spending 4.4%. The second-quarter rise of 3.9% in spending matches ISTAT's rise in nights only by coincidence; one series measures euros, the other nights.
The non-EU group includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, every Asian market and the Middle East. Its spring slowdown fits a long-haul effect, and it would also fit a later Easter in 2025, a strong first quarter in 2026 driven by the Olympics, or exchange rates. None of the five notes, published between 11 June and 13 October, mentions the Middle East, the Gulf or the conflict.
| Commentary (published) | Single month: spending (€bn) | Single month: change (%) | Period for area split | All foreign visitors (%) | EU visitors (%) | Non-EU visitors (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March (11 Jun 2026) | 3.1 | -1.0 | January-March | 5.4 | 8.2 | 2.5 |
| April (14 Jul 2026) | 4.5 | 2.1 | February-April | 4.4 | 7.9 | 0.9 |
| May (11 Aug 2026) | 5.4 | 4.3 | March-May | 2.3 | 4.1 | 0.4 |
| June (11 Sep 2026) | 6.8 | 4.8 | April-June | 3.9 | 3.3 | 4.6 |
| July (13 Oct 2026) | 8.3 | 6.8 | May-July | 5.5 | 4.4 | 6.8 |
Airports tell a similar story with even less detail. Assaeroporti's figures, reported by Teleborsa on 30 October, show 98.8 million passengers at Italian airports from June to September 2026, up 6.3%, with 68.4 million on international routes. January to September reached 187.1 million, up 5.5%. Teleborsa's report says geopolitical tensions limited connections with important Middle Eastern markets, without a figure. Assaeroporti's director general, Valentina Menin, was quoted only as saying that the geopolitical situation and airlines' route choices could affect the coming months. No Assaeroporti or ENAC table splits passengers by world area, and the national figures for March to May 2026 were not obtained for this article.
American and Asian long-haul demand
For American visitors the official 2026 record is thin. The Bank's monthly notes have no US line. The US National Travel and Tourism Office reported 2,754,661 departures by US citizens to Europe in July 2026, down 1.2% on July 2025, without a figure for Italy. Federalberghi's president Bernabò Bocca told AGI on 18 April that hotels had seen no large cancellations but a slowdown from foreign markets, "soprattutto americano", especially the American one. He gave no number and did not name Iran; he spoke of an exogenous shock. AGI's headline linked the slowdown to the war. Our analysis of American tourists in Italy sets out what the Bank of Italy measured for the US market in 2025.
A private vendor offered the sharpest figures. Tourism Review reported on 7 April 2026, citing Lybra Destination and flight records, that arrivals into Italy were down 1.6% on the previous year and that US arrivals were down 9%, Canadian arrivals up 5%, Rome up 15.6% and Venice down 15%. The article states no period and no method, and says long-haul travellers, especially from Asia, showed the biggest drop without giving a figure. These numbers cannot be checked.
For Asia, the Bank's annual tables publish one Asia row for 2025 and nothing for 2026, and its 2024 report discusses Gulf spending under Asian receipts. No official source has published a 2026 figure for any Asian market in Italy, so the effect of rerouted Gulf connections on Indian, Chinese, Japanese or Australian visitors has not been measured.
Why a rise in the totals cannot settle it
A rising total shows that more tourism happened. It cannot show how much would have happened without the war, and several other events moved the same months.
The Milano Cortina Winter Olympics ran in February. The Bank of Italy estimated that about 250,000 non-resident visitors came for the Games and spent almost €400 million, 4.3% of first-quarter receipts. Our article on the Milano Cortina 2026 visitors and economic impact covers that estimate.
Easter fell on 5 April 2026 and on 20 April 2025. An earlier Easter can move holiday nights from April into late March, which would lift March and soften April in the year-on-year comparison, whatever happened to flights.
The 2025 base is unusual. It was a Jubilee year, which drew pilgrims to Rome through the whole of 2025, as our piece on the Jubilee by the numbers sets out. It is also the first year in which ISTAT counted private non-business rentals, which lifted the 2025 national total to 535.5 million nights in Eurostat's series; ISTAT puts the total without them at 481 million. ISTAT says its Q2 comparison is consistent on that basis; its Q1 release does not reconcile with Eurostat.
The mix shifted too. The Bank attributes the second-quarter rise to business travel, and Global Blue attributes part of the Gulf shoppers' fall to an early Ramadan. Each of these factors could raise or lower the same monthly figures that a war effect would move. No ISTAT, Bank of Italy, ENIT, ENAC or Assaeroporti publication separates them, and no source has published an estimate of tourists diverted to Italy from the Eastern Mediterranean or the Gulf.
Headlines and trade figures, tested
Most of the figures that circulated in 2026 measure something narrower than their headlines. Each claim below has a named outlet and date.
The Bank's estimate was the most often relabelled. Affaritaliani's report of 29 June headlined arrivals from the Gulf down by up to 60%, and its body credited the Bank with presences from the Persian Gulf area, while giving the March, April and May figures correctly. Italpress on 3 July headlined a collapse in presences from the Persian Gulf and added, without a source, that these visitors often choose five-star hotels. The Bank names the Middle East as the area of origin and uses the Persian Gulf only to name the conflict.
AGI's headline on 2 March put over 3,500 bookings at risk. The estimate, by the Centro Studi Turistici di Firenze for Assoviaggi Confesercenti, said the sector could lose about 3,500 more bookings of packages and services, worth over €6.4 million, in the next 30 days. It assumed a quick end to the conflict and gave no further method, and most of the article concerned Italians travelling to the region. The same article's annual figures for five countries affected by the conflict cover the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Oman. The list includes Jordan and leaves out Qatar and Kuwait, so it cannot stand in for the Gulf.
Losses reported by Italian travel agencies belong to a different story. Fiavet's estimate of over €222 million in lost turnover, reported by Panorama on 12 March, came from cancelled and frozen trips by Italians to destinations such as the Maldives, Thailand and India. It measures the outbound business of Italian agencies, not tourism into Italy.
Two optimistic readings also fail on inspection. Panorama on 21 March headlined a 52% rise and described it in its summary as arrivals from abroad; its own text says the figure is Sojern's count of international hotel searches for Italy since the start of the year, "non prenotazioni", not bookings. Il Foglio on 3 August headlined that the war in the Middle East was not slowing tourism in Italy. The article combines ISTAT data reported by Refricerche, showing presences up 4% in January to May, a Tecnè survey for Federalberghi of Italians' holiday plans, an Unioncamere forecast and regional hotel data, including foreign presences up 11.7% in Veneto. None of these isolates the war.
| Source | Measure | Period | Change | Isolates the war? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of Italy, ITI report (26 Jun 2026) | Presences of tourists from the Middle East, mobile-phone data | March / April / May 2026 | about -35% / -60% / -20% | Partly: one region, three months, linked by timing only, no counterfactual, no country list |
| ISTAT, Q2 flash (14 Sep 2026) | All nights / all arrivals in accommodation | April-June 2026 | +3.9% / -0.8% | No |
| Eurostat, tour_occ_nim (30 Oct 2026) | Foreign nights in accommodation | March-August 2026 | +5.8% (our calculation) | No |
| Bank of Italy, monthly notes | Non-EU visitors' spending | March-May / May-July 2026 | +0.4% / +6.8% | No |
| Assaeroporti via Teleborsa (30 Oct 2026) | Airport passengers, all routes | June-September 2026 | +6.3% | No; Teleborsa describes a Middle East effect without a figure |
| Global Blue via Teleborsa (22 Oct 2026) | Gulf luxury tax-free shoppers in Italy | H1 2026 | -37% | No; shoppers only, early Ramadan also cited |
| US NTTO (Oct 2026) | US citizen departures to Europe | July 2026 | -1.2% | No; Italy not broken out |
| Lybra Destination via Tourism Review (7 Apr 2026) | Arrivals into Italy; US arrivals | Not stated | -1.6%; -9% | No; method and period not stated |
What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts
Travelers asking whether it is safe to travel to Italy during the Iran war will not find the answer in tourism statistics. This article measures visitor numbers, not risk. Check your own government's travel advisory and your airline before you go; routes that connect through Gulf hubs were the most disrupted in spring 2026. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency's conflict-zone bulletin covering the Middle East does not list Italy, as of its revision of 27 March 2026. Italy itself had more foreign guests in spring and summer 2026 than a year earlier, which matters for crowding and prices at the main sites more than any war effect does.
Tourism businesses and investors exposed to Middle Eastern guests have one official estimate, which puts presences down about 35%, 60% and 20% in March, April and May. Luxury retail saw a similar signal, with Gulf tax-free shoppers in Italy down 37% in the first half of 2026 according to Global Blue. For the wider market the binding uncertainty is non-EU demand, which grew 0.4% in March to May and 6.8% in May to July. Anyone underwriting 2026 should not read the national rise as proof that the war had no cost, or the spring slowdown as proof that it did. A Bank of Italy estimate for June onwards, an ENIT outturn for the Middle East, or an Assaeroporti table by world area would change this assessment.
Journalists and analysts will find the wording for each figure, with its unit, region and period, in the box above. The Bank of Italy's estimate should be cited as presences of tourists from the Middle East, and the ISTAT, Eurostat and Bank of Italy totals with their periods; the claims in the panel should not be repeated as worded. What this article adds to the series is a sharper version of its running finding. The only official estimate tying a fall in visitors to the war covers one region of origin over three months, and nothing published separates the war's effect from other causes.
Data & sources
Period covered: January 2025 to September 2026 (Middle East estimates March-May 2026; nights to August 2026; spending to July 2026; airports to September 2026)
- Banca d'Italia, Indagine sul turismo internazionale, Statistiche (26 June 2026) · Annual report on international tourism. Page 1 summary on Q1 2026 spending (+5.4%) partly offset by the fall in arrivals from the Middle East; page 5 estimate from mobile-phone data that presences of tourists from the Middle East fell about 35% in March, 60% in April and 20% in May 2026; Olympic visitors (about 250,000, almost €400 million, 4.3% of Q1 receipts). No Middle East row in the tables. The 2025 edition (30 June 2025, https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/indagine-turismo-internazionale/2025-indagine-turismo-internazionale/statistiche_ITI_30062025.pdf) was used for its sentence on Persian Gulf spending. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banca d'Italia, Turismo internazionale: monthly commentaries, March to July 2026 · Foreign visitors' spending by month and by EU and non-EU visitors over three-month periods. March (published 11 June), April (14 July), May (11 August), June (11 September) and July (13 October) notes, in the same folder as Commento-marzo-2026.pdf, Commento-aprile-2026.pdf, Commento-maggio-2026.pdf and Commento-giugno-2026.pdf. None mentions the Middle East or the conflict. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banca d'Italia, Mobile phone data and the "Travel" item in the Balance of Payments (Metodi e fonti, 28 January 2026) · Method paper by A. Carboni, C. Doria and V. Valletta: Vodafone data (27.5% of Italian SIMs, September 2023) scaled up; inbound visitors assigned by SIM issuer's country; counts SIM cards, not people; local SIMs and eSIMs missed. Does not mention Middle Eastern countries or the spring 2026 estimate. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- ISTAT, Flussi turistici, II trimestre 2026 (Statistica Flash, 14 September 2026) and I trimestre 2026 (26 May 2026) · Provisional Q2 2026 nights (147,873,640, +3.9%) and arrivals (46,940,655, -0.8%) by residents and non-residents, by month and by hotel and extra-hotel; states that changes include non-business private rentals in both years. The Q1 release (https://www.istat.it/comunicato-stampa/i-flussi-turistici-i-trimestre-2026/) gives non-resident nights +12.3% and residents +2.2%, which do not reconcile with Eurostat. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Eurostat, Nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments, monthly data (tour_occ_nim) · Italy, foreign, domestic and total nights at hotels, holiday and short-stay accommodation and campsites, January 2025 to August 2026, updated 30 October 2026, no status flags. Used for every monthly and period change in Table 1 (our calculations). The 2025 total of 535,463,245 nights is the sum of the twelve monthly 2025 values and matches the annual series tour_occ_ninat (updated 12 October 2026). Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Assaeroporti airport traffic, June-September 2026, reported by Teleborsa (30 October 2026) · Monthly passengers June to September 2026 (98.8 million, +6.3%), international 68.4 million, January to September 187.1 million (+5.5%); Teleborsa's own context note on geopolitical tensions limiting Middle East connections, no figure; director general Valentina Menin quoted on the geopolitical outlook in general. Secondary report; the Assaeroporti release itself was not found. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- EASA, Conflict Zone Information Bulletin 2026-03 R5: Airspace of the Middle East and Persian Gulf · Issued 28 February 2026; revision of 27 March 2026 valid to 10 April 2026 unless reviewed earlier. Recommends no operations at any level in the airspace of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with a carve-out above FL320 for parts of Saudi Arabia and Oman. Italy is not listed. Later revisions not checked. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Press and trade sources tested: AGI (2 March and 18 April 2026), LaPresse (2 March 2026), Affaritaliani (29 June 2026) and others · the Centro Studi Turistici di Firenze estimate for Assoviaggi Confesercenti of over 3,500 bookings at risk in 30 days, and AGI's unsourced 170,000 arrivals and 2.5 million nights from five countries affected by the conflict (AGI, 2 March); Federalberghi's Bernabò Bocca (https://www.agi.it/economia/news/2026-04-18/turismo-italia-prenotazioni-guer-36642938/); flight cancellations (https://www.lapresse.it/esteri/2026/03/02/caos-voli-in-medio-oriente-voli-bloccati-ecco-tutte-le-cancellazioni/); IATA relay and the Gulf headline (https://www.affaritaliani.it/economia/iran-la-guerra-svuota-le-rotte-del-golfo-meno-turisti-di-lusso-in-italia.html). Also opened: Italpress (3 July), Panorama (12 and 21 March), Il Foglio (3 August), Tourism Review (7 April), Teleborsa on Global Blue (22 October), ENIT's ATM Dubai release (29 April 2025, https://www.enit.it/en/enit-at-atm-dubai-2025) and the US NTTO July 2026 release. Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
Methodology
Sources used: Banca d'Italia, Indagine sul turismo internazionale, Statistiche (26 June 2026), pages 1 and 5, with the 2025 edition (30 June 2025) for its Gulf sentence; the Bank's monthly commentaries for March to July 2026 (published 11 June to 13 October 2026); the Bank's methods paper on mobile-phone data (28 January 2026); ISTAT, Flussi turistici, Q2 2026 Statistica Flash (14 September 2026) and Q1 2026 release (26 May 2026); Eurostat tour_occ_nim through the dissemination API (updated 30 October 2026), with Eurostat's 2025 annual total from tour_occ_ninat as recorded in this series; Assaeroporti figures via Teleborsa (30 October 2026); EASA CZIB 2026-03 R5 (27 March 2026); US NTTO's July 2026 release; ENIT's ATM Dubai release (29 April 2025); and press reports from AGI (2 March and 18 April 2026), LaPresse (2 March 2026), Affaritaliani (29 June 2026), Italpress (3 July 2026), Panorama (12 and 21 March 2026), Il Foglio (3 August 2026), Teleborsa on Global Blue (22 October 2026) and Tourism Review (7 April 2026); Eid al-Fitr dates from Khaleej Times (29 March 2025) and What's On Dubai (18 March 2026).
Limitations: (1) The Bank of Italy's Middle East estimate is the only official figure linking a fall in visitors to the conflict, links them by timing without a counterfactual, covers one region for three months, counts presences from SIM-card data scaled from one operator, and has no published country list, baseline or later months. (2) National series rose in 2026, but a rise cannot show what would have happened without the war; the Milano Cortina Olympics (February), Easter on 5 April 2026 against 20 April 2025, the 2025 Jubilee base, the 2025 change of basis to include non-business private rentals, business travel and Ramadan timing all affect the same months, and no source separates them. (3) ISTAT's Q1 2026 changes do not reconcile with Eurostat's monthly series; Eurostat is used. (4) The Bank's monthly notes group all non-EU visitors, so the US, UK, Asian and Middle Eastern markets cannot be separated. (5) No airport or airline series splits passengers by world area or by country of residence, and transfers through Gulf hubs are not recorded. (6) Commercial and association figures (Global Blue, Sojern, Lybra, Assoviaggi, Fiavet, Federalberghi) have no published method. (7) Documents were read online; key Bank of Italy and ISTAT sentences were checked word for word, and Eurostat values were read as exact counts and recomputed.
Handling of contested and unverified claims: each circulating claim was traced to a named outlet and date and checked against the source it cites; where the source says something narrower, the claim is named with its verdict and the accurate statement is given. Contested figures are reported with both values and the one the evidence favours. Projections, forecasts and searches are labelled as such and never treated as counts. Sources opened directly for this article: the Bank of Italy 2026 report, all five monthly notes and the methods paper; both ISTAT releases; the Eurostat API; the EASA bulletin; Teleborsa on Assaeroporti and on Global Blue; NTTO; ENIT's 2025 release; and the AGI, LaPresse, Affaritaliani, Italpress, Panorama, Il Foglio and Tourism Review articles; and the two Eid al-Fitr reports. Not opened: the Assaeroporti and ENAC primary releases, Global Blue's own report, IATA's data, any ENIT 2026 Middle East release (none found), ANSA's report of 27 June 2026, later EASA revisions and government travel advisories.
Notes on the data
(1) Gaps. No official source measures the effect of the 2026 Iran war on tourism to Italy as a whole. The only official figure linking a fall in visitors to the conflict, by timing and without a counterfactual, is the Bank of Italy's estimate of presences of tourists from the Middle East for March, April and May 2026, from mobile-phone data, with no country list, no baseline level, no method statement in the report, no discussion of Eid al-Fitr timing (30 March 2025, 20 March 2026) and no figure for June onwards. The Bank's annual tables have no Middle East or Gulf row; its monthly notes split only EU and non-EU visitors; ISTAT and Eurostat publish no 2026 nights by country of origin; Assaeroporti and ENAC publish no passenger table by world area, and March-May 2026 national airport figures were not obtained; no official 2026 figure exists for US or Asian visitors to Italy. ENIT has published no outturn for its 2025 Middle East forecast. Gulf carriers' resumption dates, later EASA revisions after 27 March 2026 and the end date of the conflict were not established. Government travel advisories were not opened, and this article gives no safety advice.
(2) Contested figures. ISTAT's Q1 2026 release gives non-resident nights +12.3%, residents +2.2% and all nights +7.5% (foreign March +17.4%); Eurostat's monthly series, built from ISTAT data, gives foreign +4.0%, domestic -1.0% and total +1.7% for January-March (foreign March +10.6%). The 2026 level agrees (71.6 million), so the difference sits in the 2025 base; Eurostat is used here, and the reason for ISTAT's base is not stated. Middle Eastern visitor scale: ENIT forecast 964,440 arrivals for 2025, Assoviaggi cites over 170,000 arrivals a year; neither is an official count and they are not reconciled. Teleborsa's July-August Italy figure (-20%) for Gulf travellers does not say whether it refers to shoppers or air traffic.
(3) Failed or qualified claims. Reports of the Bank's estimate as presences or arrivals from the Persian Gulf (Affaritaliani, 29 June 2026; Italpress, 3 July 2026) misstate the region; both give the monthly figures correctly. The "over 3,500 bookings at risk" (AGI headline, 2 March 2026) was a 30-day projection by the Centro Studi Turistici di Firenze for Assoviaggi Confesercenti, assuming a quick end to the conflict and covering mostly Italians' trips to the region. AGI's 170,000 arrivals and 2.5 million nights a year from five countries affected by the conflict carry no source line or base year, and the list includes Jordan and omits Qatar and Kuwait, so it is not a Gulf figure. ENIT's 964,440 is a forecast, not a 2025 count. Fiavet's over €222 million (Panorama, 12 March 2026) measures Italian agencies' outbound losses. AGI's headline of 18 April 2026 linking the war to falling bookings, especially from the US, is not supported by Federalberghi's quoted words, which refer to an unnamed exogenous shock and give no figure. Panorama's +52% (21 March 2026) is a search signal described in its summary as arrivals. Il Foglio's headline of 3 August 2026 is not supported by the data it cites. Tourism Review's Lybra figures (7 April 2026) are not supported by any stated period or method. Italpress's five-star characterisation of Gulf visitors carries no source.
(4) Derived figures, all our own arithmetic from Eurostat tour_occ_nim exact counts: monthly changes in foreign, domestic and total nights; foreign nights March-August +5.8% (204,231,447 against 192,996,266) and March-May +9.1%; domestic March-August +0.4%; the foreign share of extra nights (about 95%); January-March foreign +4.0%, domestic -1.0%; the implied ISTAT Q1 2025 base (about 66.6 million); and the illustration that 2.5 million nights would be under 0.5% of Eurostat's 535,463,245 nights for 2025 (the numerator is Assoviaggi's unsourced figure and is used only for scale). The January-August comparison with Spain and France (Italy +2.87%, Spain +1.14%, France +0.41%) comes from our earlier calculation on the series as updated on 22 October 2026 and was not recomputed in this run.
(5) Self-reported and commercial figures. Assoviaggi, Fiavet and Federalberghi figures and statements are association claims without published methods or samples. Global Blue's tax-free shopper counts (credited to Amadeus data) and Sojern's search data are commercial; Lybra Destination's figures are a vendor's. Assaeroporti figures are read from a Teleborsa report, not the association's release, and the remark on Middle East connections is Teleborsa's own. Eid al-Fitr dates are from Khaleej Times (29 March 2025) and What's On Dubai (18 March 2026), citing UAE announcements. Flight cancellations come from LaPresse's report of airline and airport notices; the IATA cancellation shares are relayed by Affaritaliani and were not checked against IATA.
Frequently asked questions
Is it safe to travel to Italy with the Iran war?
This article measures tourism, not safety, and gives no safety advice. Check your own government's travel advisory and your airline before travelling. For aviation, the EU Aviation Safety Agency's conflict-zone bulletin on the Middle East and Persian Gulf (CZIB 2026-03, revision of 27 March 2026) does not list Italy; later revisions were not checked for this article.
Did the Iran war reduce tourism to Italy?
For visitors from the Middle East, the Bank of Italy estimated that presences fell about 35% in March 2026, 60% in April and 20% in May, from mobile-phone data (report of 26 June 2026); it is the only official figure that links a fall in visitors to the conflict. For tourism as a whole, foreign nights and spending mostly rose over spring and summer, with falls in some months, and no official source has estimated what the totals would have been without the war.
Did Gulf arrivals to Italy fall 60%?
The Bank of Italy's figure covers tourists from the Middle East, a wider region than the Gulf, and the 60% fall applies to April 2026, the worst month. March was about 35% lower and May about 20% lower than a year earlier. No figure for June onwards has been published.
How many tourists from the Middle East visit Italy?
No official count is published. The Bank of Italy's tables have no Middle East row. ENIT forecast 964,440 arrivals from Middle Eastern markets for 2025 in a release of April 2025, and we found no outturn. AGI's report of 2 March 2026, alongside an Assoviaggi estimate, gave over 170,000 arrivals and 2.5 million nights a year from five countries affected by the conflict, with no source or base year.
Did tourism in Italy grow in 2026 despite the war?
The totals mostly grew. ISTAT's provisional figures show Q2 2026 nights up 3.9% and arrivals down 0.8%, and Eurostat shows foreign nights up 5.8% in March to August, by our calculation. Whether they grew despite the war cannot be shown, because the same months had the Olympics, an earlier Easter and a Jubilee-year base.
Did American tourists cancel trips to Italy because of the war?
There is no official 2026 count of American visitors to Italy. Federalberghi's president reported a slowdown from American guests in April 2026 without a figure and without naming the war (AGI, 18 April 2026). US citizen departures to Europe fell 1.2% in July 2026, with no Italy split (US National Travel and Tourism Office).
Were flights to Italy cancelled because of the Iran war?
Yes, on routes to the Gulf and Israel. On 2 March 2026 Rome Fiumicino cancelled 45 flights, Milan Malpensa 14 and Bergamo three, and ITA Airways suspended Tel Aviv, Dubai and Riyadh services for several days (LaPresse, 2 March 2026). Italian airports still handled 98.8 million passengers in June to September 2026, up 6.3% (Assaeroporti via Teleborsa).
What do Italian travel agencies' war losses measure?
Mostly Italians' cancelled trips abroad. Fiavet's estimate of over €222 million in lost turnover, reported by Panorama on 12 March 2026, came from trips to destinations such as the Maldives, Thailand and India. It does not measure foreign tourism into Italy.
Why can't the national figures show the war's effect?
Because a rise shows only what happened, not what would have happened otherwise. In 2026 the same months held the Milano Cortina Olympics, Easter on 5 April against 20 April in 2025, and a comparison with the 2025 Jubilee year. Middle Eastern visitors are also a small share of Italy's nights, so a fall may not show in the totals.