Italy's regions ranked by tourist nights per resident: South Tyrol leads on every count, and the order below it shifts

The ranking on ISTAT's 2024 count

ISTAT, Italy's national statistics institute, published its 2024 tourism figures in Statistica Today on 9 March 2026. The total was 466,158,045 nights in Italian accommodation. The count is a monthly census of hotels and of registered non-hotel accommodation, such as campsites, holiday villages, agriturismi and bed and breakfasts run as businesses. Private homes let without a business structure are left out. ISTAT published a separate, partial estimate of 39,050,103 nights in those homes for 2024, covering 92 of 107 provinces. It is provisional and sits outside the main total.

ISTAT does not publish a regional table of nights per resident. It publishes the regional nights, and the ratios in Table 1 are derived (ours). For both tables we divide by residents at 1 January 2025 from Eurostat's regional population series, which is supplied by ISTAT. Using one denominator for both years means any change in a region's ratio comes from the nights alone. The 21 regional populations add up exactly to Italy's 58,943,464. The regional nights add up exactly to ISTAT's national total.

Trentino-Alto Adige comes first at 52.2 nights per resident. Inside it, the two provinces behave differently. South Tyrol reaches 68.6, and Trento 35.9. Valle d'Aosta, Italy's smallest region with 122,532 residents, is second at 30.2. Veneto is third at 15.1, on the largest absolute total in the country, 73,472,377 nights. Tuscany follows at 12.6.

The rest of the list compresses quickly. Liguria and Sardinia sit near 10. Emilia-Romagna and Lazio tie at 9.1 when rounded, with Emilia-Romagna marginally ahead. From Umbria at 7.9, close to the national average, the ratios fall to between 3 and 5 for most of the south and for Lombardy and Piedmont. Molise is last at 1.6.

The 2024 count understates places where private homes carry a large share of guests. ISTAT's own partial rental estimate adds about 8% to the national total. That gap is not spread evenly, and the 2025 count shows where it sits.

The ranking on Eurostat's 2025 count, with private rentals

Eurostat, the EU statistics office, publishes nights by region in its dataset tour_occ_nin2, last updated on 20 October 2026. Italy's 2025 regional figures are on a new basis. Non-business private rentals are included for the first time, after Italy made registration of all short-term lets compulsory. Eurostat's Italy total for 2025 is 535,463,245 nights, and the 21 regional figures add up to it exactly. ISTAT's own 2025 total without non-business rentals is 481 million. ISTAT has not yet published 2025 figures by region.

Table 2 ranks the same regions on the 2025 count, with the change in rank against Table 1. The two tables are not like for like. The 2025 figures include a whole category of accommodation that the 2024 figures leave out, and Eurostat's database shows the two years side by side without a break flag. A region's 2024-to-2025 difference mixes one year's change with the new coverage, and no published source separates the two at regional level. We report the rank changes and leave the percentage gaps out of the headline figures for that reason.

Who moves when rentals are counted

The top four do not change. Trentino-Alto Adige rises to 56.1 nights per resident, Valle d'Aosta to 36.9 and Veneto to 15.3. Tuscany is fourth again, at 15.2, now 0.1 behind Veneto where the 2024 gap was 2.5.

Tuscany's jump is the clearest case of the new coverage at work. Eurostat counts 55,475,875 nights in Tuscany in 2025. The 2025 bulletin of Toscana Promozione Turistica, the regional tourism observatory, counts 45,769,090 nights "al netto delle locazioni turistiche", net of tourist rentals. The difference, 9,706,785 nights (our arithmetic), matches the 9.7 million rental nights that the same bulletin and the Regione Toscana statistics office report as an addition.

Sardinia moves from sixth to fifth, with 13.9 nights per resident on Eurostat's 21,720,511. ISTAT's 2024 count for Sardinia was 15,610,251, so the two counts differ by 39% (our arithmetic). The island's own tourism observatory, which counts private rentals, reported 21,922,765 nights for 2025 and a rise of 15.95% on its own series. Set against ISTAT's 2024 figure, the observatory number would suggest a rise of about 40%. That reading mixes series and is wrong.

Lazio climbs two places, from eighth to sixth, with 61,532,691 nights and 10.8 per resident. Sicily moves from 18th to 17th, with 23,351,923 nights against ISTAT's 17,348,238 for 2024. Puglia and Lombardy each gain a place. Umbria passes Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Liguria falls from fifth to seventh. Its 2025 count, 15,972,514, is 1.0% below its 2024 count, even though the 2025 basis is wider. Veneto's 2025 figure is only 0.9% above its 2024 figure, which matches the +0.9% Regione Veneto reported for 2025 in February 2026. Neither the Eurostat database nor the regional releases we read say how many rental nights each region's 2025 figure contains. Either the rental component is small in these two regions, or it was already counted in some form. The sources do not say which. Basilicata drops two places and Emilia-Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Campania one each, because others rose faster on the new basis.

Most of these moves happen among regions whose ratios sit within a point of each other. A one-place change between Puglia, Lombardy and Basilicata, all between 4.5 and 6, says more about the new coverage than about any shift in where tourists go. The largest moves are robust. Sardinia's and Lazio's rises are large on any reading, and the top four hold.

Why the Alps lead and the big cities do not

The regions with the most visitors in absolute terms are not the ones where tourism weighs most on residents. Veneto had 15.8% of Italy's nights in 2024 (our arithmetic), the largest share, and also 4.85 million residents. Lazio has Rome and 5.71 million residents. Lombardy, fourth by total nights in 2025 with 56,693,078, has Milan, Lake Como, part of Lake Garda and more than 10 million residents, which brings its ratio down to 5.7 even on the wider 2025 count.

Trentino-Alto Adige had 12.2% of Italy's nights in 2024 with 1.8% of its residents (our arithmetic). The region's guests spread across ski resorts, lake towns and Dolomite valleys with small populations, in winter and in summer. South Tyrol's average stay in 2025 was 4.2 nights per arrival on Eurostat's figures, against 3.3 for Italy (our arithmetic). Longer stays in places with few residents push the ratio up. Our Dolomites travel guide covers the valleys where much of this happens.

The two provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige also respond differently to the new count. South Tyrol's 2025 figure is 3.2% above its 2024 figure, and its regional statistics office, ASTAT, reported 2025 growth of 3.1%, as Südtirol News relayed in May 2026. Trento's 2025 figure is 15.4% above its 2024 figure (our arithmetic), which lifts its ratio from 35.9 to 41.5. The difference fits a larger rental component in Trento than in South Tyrol, but no published source breaks the 2025 totals down by type of accommodation, so the explanation stays unconfirmed.

Valle d'Aosta works the same way on a smaller scale. With 122,532 residents, its 4,519,068 nights in 2025 give it a higher ratio than any region except Trentino-Alto Adige.

Cities weigh more when you narrow the area. Pagella Politica, an Italian fact-checking site, calculated nights per resident for municipalities from ISTAT's 2024 data and published the results on 18 August 2025. Venice municipality had 53, the highest among municipalities of more than 50,000 people. Rimini had 46, Florence 26, Rome 16, Milan 10, and Naples and Turin 4.2 each. Venice municipality includes the mainland districts of Mestre and Marghera. For the historic centre alone, the Comune di Venezia's tourism yearbook (9,091,691 nights in 2023) and its statistics office (48,489 residents at the end of 2024, as reported by Il Post) give about 187 nights per resident (our arithmetic, mixed years; neither figure re-checked for this article). Even so, the whole province of South Tyrol, at 68.6 in 2024, has a higher average than Venice municipality. Our report on Venice's access fee results covers the city's own attempt to manage day visitors, who appear in none of these counts.

Rome's numbers need care. Turismo Roma, the city's tourism portal, reported 52.92 million nights and 22.9 million arrivals for 2025, from the Lazio tourism industry body EBTL. The release does not say what area those figures cover. ISTAT counts 42,705,319 nights in the municipality of Rome in 2024, and Eurostat counts 61,532,691 for the whole Lazio region in 2025. The three figures cover different areas and years and should not be set side by side.

Limone sul Garda and the towns far above any region

ISTAT does publish a per-resident measure for municipalities. It calls it the indice di turisticità and defines it as the ratio between all tourist nights recorded in accommodation and the number of residents of the same area. ISTAT does not say which date it uses for residents.

In 2024, Limone sul Garda, on the Lombard shore of Lake Garda, had the highest value in Italy at 1,097.8 nights per resident. Andalo, in Trentino, followed at 780.0, and Corvara in Badia, in South Tyrol, at 743.8. ISTAT names the next group without values: Campitello di Fassa, Selva di Val Gardena, Canazei, Molveno and Badia in Trentino-Alto Adige, then Lazise, Lignano Sabbiadoro, Cavallino-Treporti and San Michele al Tagliamento on Lake Garda and the upper Adriatic coast.

Limone's 1,097.8 is about 139 times the national figure of 7.9 (our arithmetic). It is about 15.5 times South Tyrol's 2025 provincial average (our arithmetic). Limone recorded 1,216,414 nights in 2024, 48th among Italian municipalities by total nights. ISTAT does not print its resident count. Pagella Politica gives 1,110 residents. Limone has held first place for years. L'Adige, a Trento newspaper, reported a value of about 1,021 for Limone in 2016, also first in Italy. Our Lake Garda travel guide covers the town and its neighbours.

Sorrento is often grouped with these towns, and the ISTAT figures put it on a different list. ISTAT's second municipal indicator, tourist density, divides nights by land area. On that measure Sorrento leads Italy with 289,411.6 nights per square kilometre, ahead of Cattolica at 254,292.4 and Lignano Sabbiadoro at 234,554.1. Sorrento is crowded for its size. It does not appear among the towns ISTAT lists for nights per resident.

The gap between towns and regions is the point. Regional averages smooth over a few dozen municipalities where guests outnumber residents many times over on an average night, and many more where tourism is light. A region's ratio tells you how much tourism it has relative to its population. It does not tell you how crowded any one place feels.

What a nights-per-resident figure measures, and what it misses

The ratio counts nights, and a night is one guest staying one night in registered accommodation. It does not count people. A family of four on a seven-night stay adds 28 nights. The headline phrase "tourists per resident" is common, and no Italian or EU statistic measures it.

Arrivals come closer to a count of trips. Eurostat records 9,071,596 arrivals in South Tyrol in 2025, or 16.8 per resident (our arithmetic). Lazio had 16,750,053 arrivals, or 2.9 per resident, and Italy 160,765,334, or 2.7. An arrival is a check-in, so a guest who changes hotel twice counts three times, and arrivals are still not a headcount of visitors.

Several groups appear in none of these figures. Day-trippers, who sleep elsewhere, are uncounted. So are people staying in second homes they own and guests staying with friends or family. Unregistered lets are outside even the 2025 count. Residents themselves are a narrow denominator. Commuters, students and seasonal workers who live in a place without registering are not counted, which can inflate a ratio in small resort towns.

The ratio is also an annual average. South Tyrol's 2025 figure works out at about 0.19 guests for every resident on an average night of the year (our arithmetic, nights divided by 365 and by residents). That is roughly one guest for every five residents. In August and at the height of the ski season the figure is higher, and in shoulder months lower. Monthly regional figures are not covered here, so peak ratios are not given.

Finally, the 2025 count is a new series. Italy's total rose from 466 million on the old basis in 2024 to 535 million on the new basis in 2025, and most of that difference comes from the change in coverage. ISTAT's own 2025 total on the old basis is 481 million, which leaves about 54 million of the 69 million gap, roughly four-fifths, to the wider coverage (our arithmetic). Our report on Italy's tourism nights compared with Spain's explains how the same break changed Italy's European ranking. Our 2026 record watch tracks this year's monthly figures on the new basis.

What the regions, the press and the data each say

Regional tourism bodies publish their own 2025 totals ahead of ISTAT, and the press repeats rankings drawn from several different measures. Table 3 sets common claims against the figures they rest on. Each region's own count uses its own scope and timing. Where a regional total is close to Eurostat's, the two probably share a basis. Where it is not, the sources do not explain the gap.

Three patterns stand out. First, totals from regional bodies that count private rentals, such as Sardinia's observatory, sit close to Eurostat's 2025 figures, while totals that leave rentals out, such as Tuscany's headline, sit close to ISTAT's 2024 level. Second, press rankings of the "most visited" or "most saturated" places use different measures under the same words. One ranks occupancy on booking platforms. Another ranks nights per resident and calls them tourists. Third, the one European ranking we could check against its source holds up for Italy. Eurostat's own figure for South Tyrol in 2024 is 68.9 nights per resident, as Euronews reported on 19 August 2026, and Siviaggia's version of the same ranking put it third in the EU after two groups of Greek islands.

Trentino's figures show how far the counts can drift. ISPAT, the provincial statistics office, reported more than 20 million nights for 2025, according to L'Adige on 13 May 2026. Eurostat counts 22,669,069. L'Adige's breakdown, more than 14 million in hotels and more than 6.2 million elsewhere, puts the gap at up to about 2.5 million nights. The claim is true as worded, and no source we found says whether ISPAT's count includes the rentals Eurostat now counts. For Sicily, the Region's preliminary figure of more than 22.5 million, reported by Italpress on 17 March 2026, is up to 0.85 million below Eurostat's 23,351,923. The press reports do not say whether it includes rentals. Italy's national rules for registering rentals, which made the 2025 count possible, are covered in our report on the CIN code and Italy's rental rules.

What is still missing

ISTAT has not published 2025 tourism figures by region. Its last pattern was a March release for the year before last, which points to March 2027. Until then, the only complete 2025 regional series is Eurostat's, on the new basis.

No source publishes a restated 2024 regional series that includes non-business rentals. ISTAT's partial 2024 rental estimate of 39 million nights has no regional split in the publication we read. This is why no one can yet say how much of Sardinia's or Sicily's 2025 total is new coverage and how much is growth.

Eurostat does not state, region by region, how many 2025 nights come from non-business rentals. For Tuscany the match with the regional figures is close. For Veneto and Liguria the 2025 figures barely move, and the reason is not published.

No Italian source counts unique visitors by region, and none counts day-trippers. ISTAT does not publish a nights-per-resident table for regions, so every regional ratio in this article is our calculation. ISTAT does not state the reference date of the residents in its municipal indicator, and it does not print municipal resident counts. Municipal figures for 2025 are not yet out. Monthly peak ratios for regions are not covered here.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers who want to know where tourism weighs most should look at South Tyrol, Trentino and Valle d'Aosta, where guests stay longer and residents are few, and at towns such as Limone sul Garda, Andalo and Corvara in Badia, where nights outnumber residents more than 700 times over a year. Regions with big totals, such as Veneto, Lazio and Lombardy, spread their visitors across large populations. Crowding in any one place depends on the season and the town, and a regional average will not show it. For Sicily, low in the table, and Sardinia, near the top, the 2025 count, which adds private rentals and a year's change, is more than a third higher than ISTAT's 2024 count, a sign that the old figures missed a large share of guests. Our Sicily travel guide covers where visitors concentrate on the island.

Tourism businesses and investors should check which basis a regional figure uses before comparing markets. On ISTAT's 2024 count, Tuscany trailed Veneto by 2.5 nights per resident. On Eurostat's 2025 count, with rentals, the gap is 0.1. Sardinia's and Sicily's 2025 totals, which add rentals and a year's change, are more than a third higher than their 2024 counts, and no published source splits the two effects. Growth rates computed across the two series measure the change in coverage. Regional bodies' own 2025 totals vary in scope, so name the publisher and whether rentals are in.

Journalists and analysts should write nights per resident, not tourists per resident, and give the year, the basis and the denominator. Cite South Tyrol at 68.9 for 2024 or about 71 for 2025 from Eurostat, and Limone sul Garda at 1,097.8 for 2024 from ISTAT. Do not put Sorrento on the per-resident list, since it leads ISTAT's density measure instead. Do not set ISTAT's 2024 regional figures against Eurostat's 2025 figures as growth, and do not compare a city total of undefined area, such as Rome's 52.92 million, with a regional or municipal count. ISTAT's regional 2025 release, expected in March 2027 on its usual timing, is the next point at which these rankings can be checked on a consistent basis.