Italy's Luxury Hotel Boom: Five-Star Hotels Up 46% Since 2019 as the Budget End Shrank

What ISTAT counts, and what "luxury" means in the data

ISTAT surveys the capacity of every registered accommodation establishment each year: the number of establishments, bedrooms, beds and bathrooms, by type and by star category, for the country, each region, each province and each comune. The data are published in its IstatData warehouse, and Eurostat publishes the national totals. The two match exactly. Eurostat's count of hotel beds for Italy in 2025 is 2,299,940, the same as ISTAT's.

The star categories in the dataset run from one to five. ISTAT combines "5 stelle" and "5 stelle lusso", the five-star luxury class that some regions award, into a single category. There is no national count of five-star luxury hotels on their own. In this article "five-star" always means both together. Stars are awarded by the regions under their own rules, so a five-star hotel in one region is not guaranteed to meet the same criteria as one in another.

The same warehouse holds arrivals and nights by star category. That makes Italy one of the few countries where the luxury tier's supply and demand can be followed side by side from official data. It does not publish room rates, so the price side of luxury still depends on private vendors.

The five-star tier grew fastest while the budget end shrank

Between 2019 and 2025 the number of five-star hotels in Italy rose 46.0%, from 554 to 809. Five-star beds rose 29.5%, from 84,913 to 109,941, and five-star rooms 28.1%, from 39,036 to 49,995. In 2025 alone the tier added 38 hotels and 6,285 beds, a rise of 4.9% in hotels and 6.1% in beds on 2024.

The stock as a whole barely changed. All hotels together grew 1.7% in number and 1.7% in beds over the six years, and total hotel rooms grew 0.5%. Four-star hotels grew 13.2% in number and 8.0% in beds, adding 800 hotels and 65,574 beds, 2.6 times the five-star tier's 25,028 (our arithmetic). Three-star hotels, still the largest category with 15,065 establishments, lost 3.8% of their beds. Two-star and one-star hotels together fell from 8,048 to 7,288 establishments, a drop of 9.4%.

These national totals include Rome's jump in 2024, which this article treats as a probable break in the series (see the Rome section). That one-year step added 363 hotels and 27,846 beds to Rome's hotel stock, equal to 70.6% of Italy's net growth in hotel beds between 2019 and 2025, and 38 five-star hotels with 4,156 beds. Without it, all hotels grew about 0.6% in number and 0.5% in beds, and five-star hotels about 39% in number and 25% in beds (our arithmetic). The direction is the same. The size of the national change is smaller than the headline totals suggest.

The result is a slow change in the shape of Italian hospitality. Five-star hotels held 3.8% of all hotel beds in 2019 and 4.8% in 2025 (our arithmetic). Federalberghi, the hoteliers' federation, calculated from ISTAT data in a May 2025 release that four- and five-star hotels made up 8.5% of the hotel supply in 2000 and 22% in 2023. ISTAT's 2023 figures give 22.1% of establishments, which matches.

Demand moved with supply. ISTAT recorded 14,872,132 nights in five-star hotels in 2025, up 27.6% on 2019 and 5.7% on 2024. Over the same six years nights in all hotels rose 2.6%, to 288,181,878. The five-star tier holds about 5% of hotel nights. Five-star hotels added 3.2 million nights over the period and four-star hotels 9.5 million (our arithmetic). Arrivals in five-star hotels rose 20.0%, to 4,901,347, and the average stay lengthened from 2.85 to 3.03 nights.

Foreign guests carried the growth. They accounted for 77.7% of five-star nights in 2025, up from 75.9% in 2019. Foreign nights in five-star hotels rose 30.7% over the period and Italian nights 17.7%. ISTAT's statistical yearbook shows the same pattern. In 2024 five-star luxury, five-star and four-star hotels together took 58.1% of non-residents' hotel nights and 43.0% of residents'. Our analysis of who spends most in Italy per night sets out what those markets spend.

Nights grew almost as fast as beds. Dividing nights by beds gives 137.3 nights per five-star bed in 2019 and 135.3 in 2025, against about 125 for all hotels in both years (our arithmetic). This is a rough measure of use, not an occupancy rate. It ignores seasonal closures and counts beds at a single point in the year. On this rough measure, the expansion of the luxury stock has so far been matched by guests.

Smaller hotels, more of them

The five-star expansion is an expansion in the number of hotels more than in their size. The 255 five-star hotels added between 2019 and 2025 brought 10,959 rooms, an average of 43 rooms for each net addition (our arithmetic). The average five-star hotel shrank from 72.2 rooms in 2017 and 70.5 in 2019 to 61.8 in 2025.

The flagship brand openings do not explain the fall. The eleven projects in Table 3 average about 98 rooms, with a median of 102, well above the average five-star hotel in either year. Only Orient Express Venezia (47 rooms), Corinthia Rome (60) and Six Senses Milan (68) are near or below the 2025 average. Cushman & Wakefield, the property consultancy, put the average opening in the first half of 2025 at about 75 rooms, and that figure covers every category, mostly four-star. The falling average must therefore come from small properties joining the five-star class.

Venice shows that effect most sharply. The comune of Venice had 22 five-star hotels in 2019 and 39 in 2025, an increase of 77.3%. Its five-star beds rose 2.8%, from 4,926 to 5,062. In 2022 alone the count rose by 11 hotels while beds rose by 92. The average five-star hotel in Venice now has 130 beds, against 224 in 2019. ISTAT does not say which properties changed class, and the dataset carries no note. The numbers point to small properties entering the five-star category rather than large new hotels.

This matters for anyone reading "new luxury hotel" headlines. A rising count of five-star hotels can mean new buildings, conversions of existing hotels, or upgrades of small properties to a higher class. Only the beds and rooms show how much capacity actually arrived.

Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice and the lakes

Rome has the largest five-star stock in the country. ISTAT counted 98 five-star hotels in the comune of Rome in 2025, with 7,100 rooms and 14,644 beds, against 49 hotels and 9,636 beds in 2019. Rome holds 12.1% of Italy's five-star hotels and 13.3% of its five-star beds (our arithmetic). Five-star beds made up 9.9% of the city's hotel beds in 2025, up from 8.0% in 2019.

Most of Rome's increase arrived in a single year. Between 2023 and 2024 the city's five-star count went from 61 to 99. In the same year the count of all hotels in Rome jumped from 1,299 to 1,662, up 27.9%, and hotel beds rose 23.2%. No operator release or consultancy report describes openings on that scale in Rome in 2024, and ISTAT gives no explanation. The likeliest reading is a change in the regional register or in classification, but that is our inference and it is unverified. Rome's 2019 to 2023 change, from 49 to 61 hotels and from 9,636 to 10,688 beds (+10.9%), is the safer guide to the pace of new supply. The city's wider visitor numbers are set out in our Rome tourism statistics.

Milan's five-star count rose from 24 to 33 between 2019 and 2025, but its five-star beds grew only 7.0%, from 6,315 to 6,759. In 2025 Milan's five-star beds fell 8.9% from 7,418 the year before. Florence grew faster, from 20 five-star hotels in 2019 to 30 in 2025, with beds up 41.4% to 4,580 and rooms up 49.3% to 1,811.

The lakes are not statistical units, so the closest official measure is the province. Como province, which covers most of Lake Como's shoreline apart from the Lecco branch, had 7 five-star hotels in 2019 and 12 in 2025, with beds up 69.0% to 1,590. Brescia province, which includes the western shore of Lake Garda as well as Franciacorta and the mountains, went from 13 to 19 five-star hotels and from 1,644 to 2,340 beds. Verona province, on the eastern shore, went from 7 to 11 hotels, and Trento province, which includes the northern tip, from 7 to 12. Lake Maggiore's upper Piedmont shore, in Verbano-Cusio-Ossola province, has three five-star hotels, all in Stresa, with 515 beds, one bed fewer than in 2019. Our Lake Como and Garda visitor statistics cover demand on both lakes.

Outside the cities and lakes, Sardinia added the most. The island had 33 five-star hotels in 2019 and 53 in 2025, and its five-star beds rose 56.8% to 12,869.

Two regional series need care. Sicily's figures for 2024 show five-star beds 15.3% below 2019, but the same year shows all Sicilian hotels falling from 1,352 to 1,150 and recovering to 1,370 in 2025, which looks like incomplete reporting. On 2025 data, Sicily's five-star beds were 14.1% above 2019, at 9,356. Our own Sicily tourism statistics repeated a press report from the Prometeia study that the island's five-star beds were 15% below 2019; that figure matches ISTAT's 2024 data and is superseded by 2025. Campania's 2025 figures show the comune of Positano with two five-star hotels after six in 2024, Ravello with one after four and Capri with eight after thirteen. No source we found explains those drops, so we do not use Campania's 2025 data for trends.

"Over 500 five-star hotels in Rome" and other numbers that don't hold

On 10 December 2025 the news site Affaritaliani reported that Rome "vanta oltre 500 hotel 5 stelle". On 30 December 2025 Turismo Roma, the tourism portal of the City of Rome, repeated that "with over 500 five-star hotels, the city is preparing to solidify its lead". ISTAT counts 98 five-star hotels in the comune of Rome, 103 in the province and 809 in the whole of Italy. The claim is wrong by a factor of about five.

The same Turismo Roma page said that Rome "recorded about 4.7 million arrivals in the luxury segment" in 2024, with an average stay of 4.1 nights. It gave no source. ISTAT's figure for arrivals in five-star hotels in all of Italy in 2024 was 4,668,152, with an average stay of 3.01 nights. A Rome figure equal to the national five-star total cannot be right as stated.

The page also said that Rome would open 14 new high-end properties with more than 1,500 new rooms "by 2026", without giving a source. The earliest traceable source we found is Marco Zalamena, then head of hospitality at EY Italy, quoted by Il Sole 24 Ore on 22 August 2024: at least 14 high-end hotels with more than 1,500 rooms were expected to open in Rome "over the next few years". That is not a 2026 deadline, and no list of the 14 has been published.

Turismo Roma's figure of more than €1.7 billion in capital flows in the first half of 2025 appears in a paragraph about Rome. It matches Cushman & Wakefield's figure for all of Italy in that half-year, "nearly €1.7 billion". The same firm put Rome and Venice together at over €780 million.

The pattern repeats outside Rome. On 28 January 2025 the regional broadcaster Espansione TV headlined that Lake Como took "il 30% degli investimenti alberghieri". EY's release of the day before places Lake Como's 30% straight after the resort segment, which was €831 million, or 39% of a €2.1 billion national total. Read in that context, Lake Como's share is 30% of resort investment, about €250 million (our arithmetic), not 30% of the market. On 27 July 2026 Forbes Italia wrote that "almost 200" new properties were expected in Italy in 2026, mostly upscale and luxury, citing unnamed industry analyses. Cushman & Wakefield counted more than 80 openings in the first half of 2026, about half of them four-star, and expected more than 100 more by the end of the year. Those are hotels of every category, and the figure is not a count of luxury openings.

The openings: what the operators have said

The pipeline is best read from the operators' and owners' own announcements, with their dates. Several projects have opened since 2025. Orient Express La Minerva, the brand's first hotel, opened near the Pantheon in Rome on 7 April 2025 with 93 rooms. Corinthia Rome opened in February 2026 in a palazzo long associated with the Bank of Italy, with 60 rooms. In Venice, Orient Express Venezia opened in Palazzo Donà Giovannelli on 30 March 2026, and the Danieli reopened as a Four Seasons hotel on 30 July 2026 with 120 rooms, rising to 168 when a third building is restored in 2027. On Lake Como, the Lake Como EDITION, a Marriott brand, opened in March 2026 in the former Britannia Excelsior at Cadenabbia, with 148 rooms, according to its owners' release of 12 March 2026.

Several flagship projects have slipped. Rosewood Rome, in the former headquarters of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro on Via Veneto, was announced in January 2021 as opening in 2023, according to the release as published at the time. The same release on Rosewood's website now gives 2026, and the hotel's own page says 2027, with 147 rooms instead of the 157 first announced. Six Senses Milan, on Via Brera, was announced by IHG in October 2024 for 2025; in November 2025 Six Senses gave "Winter 2026". Mandarin Oriental said in May 2024 that its Rome hotel, 108 rooms in ten 19th-century villas in the Sallustiano district, was scheduled to open in 2026; we found no opening announcement by 8 November 2026. Marriott's Ritz-Carlton at Bellagio, signed in February 2023 for 2026, is in the same position.

Some projects are further out. Raffles Lake Como, at Moltrasio, is due in 2027 with 84 rooms. Six Senses Lake Como, also at Cadenabbia, is due in 2028 with 102 rooms. Four Seasons has been named as operator of Palazzo Marini in Rome, bought by the developer Fort Partners for €165 million in July 2022, but no opening date has been announced. A Rome listing from July 2023 had both the Four Seasons and the Rosewood opening by the end of that year. Neither has opened.

One owner recurs. Gruppo Statuto is the partner in the Danieli and the owner of the buildings for Six Senses Milan and Six Senses Lake Como, and it owns the buildings of Mandarin Oriental Milan. A large part of the luxury pipeline in Venice, Milan and Lake Como therefore rests with a single Italian property group, whatever brand goes on the door.

The money: three consultancies, three totals

There is no official statistic for investment in hotel property. The figures come from consultancies, each with its own deal list, which none of them publishes. They agree that 2025 was a strong year and disagree on how strong.

Cushman & Wakefield put hotel investment in Italy at €2.5 billion in 2025, up 29%, across 110 transactions, the most since 2007. EY put it at €2.5 billion, up 19%, and at more than €2.5 billion in its summary. Scenari Immobiliari and Castello SGR, in a report presented in Milan in July 2026, as reported by the trade site Qualitytravel, gave €2.35 billion, up 27%, across about 70 properties. The implied 2024 totals range from €1.85 billion to €2.10 billion (our arithmetic). EY's own figure for 2024 was €2.1 billion. All of these are market estimates by private firms.

They agree on where the money went. Cushman & Wakefield gave Rome 23% of the 2025 total and Milan 15%. EY gave Rome €630 million, or 25%, Milan 16% and Venice 10%, with the four big art cities taking 55%. Cushman & Wakefield said 48% of the capital went into upper-upscale and luxury hotels, and EY put resorts at €822 million, or a third of the total.

The first half of 2026 looked different. Cushman & Wakefield reported €1.3 billion, which it described as 18% below an exceptional first half of 2025. Luxury deal volume fell 76% and upper-upscale volume 81%, while upscale and upper-midscale hotels took 68% of the money between them. Milan rose 143% to €346 million and Rome fell 36% to €308 million. The firm's own figure for the first half of 2025 was "nearly €1.7 billion", which would make the fall about 23% rather than 18% (our arithmetic); the difference is not explained. Scenari Immobiliari estimated about €1.25 billion for the same half-year.

A fall in luxury transactions is not a fall in luxury hotels. The register measures buildings in operation, and the consultancies measure sales of buildings. Fewer trophy assets changing hands in one half-year can reflect a lack of sellers as easily as a lack of buyers, and none of these reports says which.

What nobody publishes

The register leaves several gaps. ISTAT does not separate five-star luxury hotels from five-star hotels. No public body publishes a register of hotels under construction or signed, so the pipeline exists only in operators' announcements and in consultancy counts that mix every category. There is no official room rate, occupancy rate or revenue figure for five-star hotels; nights per bed is the closest official measure, and it is ours. Investment totals are private estimates whose deal lists are not disclosed.

The register itself has breaks that ISTAT does not explain: Rome in 2024, Sicily in 2024, Como province in 2023, when its five-star count fell to five before returning to nine, and Campania in 2025. The lakes cannot be measured directly, because the provinces that contain them also contain cities, valleys and mountains. Varese province, on Lake Maggiore's eastern shore, has no five-star hotel in the data.

The comparisons that travel furthest cannot be checked at all. Turismo Roma's page places the claim that Rome ranks second in Europe, behind London, for rooms in five-star hotels next to a citation of "a recent Deloitte report". We found no such Deloitte report, and no cross-city dataset that would test the ranking, because Eurostat publishes no star categories.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Italy has more five-star hotels than ever, and most of the new ones are small. The average five-star hotel now has about 62 rooms. Rome, Florence, Venice and Lake Como have all added luxury capacity since 2019, while Milan's five-star bed count is roughly where it was. Many of the hotels in the news are conversions of famous older properties, such as the Danieli in Venice and the former Britannia Excelsior on Lake Como, so an old name can come with a new brand and a new price. Opening dates slip often, so check a new hotel's own website before you plan around it. In Rome and Milan, five-star guests also pay the highest tourist tax rates among Italy's big cities, which our guide to Italy's tourist tax rates lists by city. For specific properties, our best hotels in Rome and best hotels on Lake Como pages compare the established names.

Tourism businesses and investors. The official data describe a luxury tier that grew 29.5% in beds and 27.6% in nights between 2019 and 2025, with nights per bed almost unchanged. On this rough measure, supply has so far been matched by guests. The binding facts are concentration and size. Of the 809 five-star hotels, 212, about a quarter, are in Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice and Como province, and the average net addition since 2019 has 43 rooms. Anyone underwriting a five-star project should read the register at the level of beds, not hotel counts, and treat Rome's 2024 step, which inflates the national totals, as a probable break in the series. The threshold that would change this reading is nights per five-star bed falling for two years running while the stock keeps growing. The other signal to watch is whether the 76% fall in luxury deal volume in the first half of 2026 persists into the full year.

Journalists and analysts. Safe to cite: 809 five-star hotels in Italy in 2025, including five-star luxury, against 554 in 2019 (ISTAT); 109,941 five-star beds, up 29.5%, against 8.0% for four-star and falls for every lower category; national totals that include Rome's unexplained 2024 step; 14,872,132 five-star nights in 2025, 77.7% of them by foreign guests; 98 five-star hotels in the comune of Rome. Credit investment figures to the firm that published them, and give the range: €2.35 billion to just over €2.5 billion for 2025. Do not repeat: "over 500 five-star hotels in Rome" (ISTAT counts 98); "4.7 million luxury arrivals in Rome" (that is Italy's national five-star total); 14 Rome openings "by 2026" (the earliest source, from EY, said "over the next few years"); Lake Como's "30% of hotel investment" (30% of resort investment); "almost 200 new properties" in 2026 as a verified count. The finding this article adds to the series is that Italy's luxury hotel boom is measurable in official data, and it is a boom in the number of small five-star hotels at the top of a hotel stock whose budget end is shrinking.