Key takeaways
- Foreign visitors spent €56.7 billion in Italy in 2025 and Italians spent €34.1 billion abroad, leaving a travel surplus of €22.7 billion, according to the Bank of Italy.
- At chained 2020 prices the travel surplus fell from €18.8 billion to €18.5 billion, so the €1.5 billion nominal gain came from relative prices.
- Foreign visitors' spending rose 4.6% in current prices and 3.1% in real terms, while Italians' spending abroad rose 3.2% in current prices and 6.2% in real terms.
- Since 2019, receipts are up 28.0% in current prices and 7.5% at constant prices (our calculation from Bank of Italy data).
- The €56.7 billion is balance-of-payments travel spending. It includes same-day visitors, excludes international fares and domestic tourism, and is not tourism revenue, profit or tourism GDP.
- The travel surplus equals 1.0% of GDP and 145% of Italy's €15.6 billion current-account surplus on the bank's 20 October 2026 release (our calculation).
- On Eurostat's harmonized data, Italy ranks third of ten EU countries checked by travel receipts and second by balance, with Portugal, Greece and France within €2.7 billion.
- Travel receipts are 2.5% of Italy's GDP, against 2.6% in France, 6.2% in Spain, 9.4% in Portugal and 9.5% in Greece (our calculation).
Foreign visitors spent €56.7 billion in Italy in 2025, according to the Bank of Italy. Italians spent €34.1 billion on trips abroad. The difference, a travel surplus of €22.7 billion, rose by €1.5 billion on 2024. That is the number usually reported as Italy tourism revenue and its tourism surplus. Measured at 2020 prices, the same surplus fell, from €18.8 billion to €18.5 billion. The gain in the surplus came from prices.
The figures come from one line of Italy's balance of payments, the account of money flowing between residents and the rest of the world. The line is called travel. It records what non-resident travelers buy in Italy (credits, or receipts) and what Italian residents buy abroad (debits, or expenditure). The Bank of Italy estimates both from a survey of travelers interviewed at the border. It also publishes both at constant prices, using deflators from the national accounts. In 2025 the prices foreign visitors paid in Italy rose, and the prices Italians paid abroad, measured in euros, fell. The bank says the stronger euro helped contain the cost of trips abroad. The first effect inflated receipts. The second held down expenditure. Together they produced a larger surplus in euros while the surplus at constant prices slipped.
The distinction matters to anyone who uses the number. A hotel owner reading a rising surplus as rising demand, an analyst citing it as tourism revenue, or a journalist setting it beside Spain's figure is working with a measure that has a narrow scope and a price effect inside it. The travel line excludes international air and sea fares. It excludes what Italians spend on holidays at home. It counts border crossings rather than people, and its survey has no published margin of error. This article sets out what the €56.7 billion counts, how the surplus behaves at constant prices, what it does for Italy's current account and how Italy compares with Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and Germany on one harmonized basis.
What the €56.7 billion counts, and what it leaves out
The figure is the travel credit in Italy's balance of payments for 2025: €56,724 million in the Bank of Italy's international tourism survey results, published on 26 June 2026. The same value appears in the bank's balance-of-payments release of 20 October 2026 and in Eurostat's balance-of-payments dataset, updated on 2 October 2026. Expenditure is €34,053 million and the balance €22,671 million in all three. Receipts rose 4.6% on 2024 and expenditure 3.2%. The balance rose 6.9% on the million-euro figures (our calculation).
Travel covers goods and services bought by non-residents during a stay of less than a year: lodging, meals, shopping, museum tickets, local transport. The bank splits the 2025 receipts by spending category. Accommodation took €25.6 billion, 45.2% of the total. Restaurants and bars took €13.0 billion, shopping €8.6 billion and transport inside Italy €5.4 billion. Flights and ferries to and from Italy are not in the travel line. The balance of payments records them under transport, a separate item. A visitor's transatlantic ticket on a foreign airline never enters the €56.7 billion. For the passenger side of those trips, see our analysis of Italy's airport passenger traffic in 2025.
Same-day visitors are included. The bank estimates 92.2 million foreign travelers in 2025, of whom 30.8 million came for the day. Those day visitors were a third of all travelers (our calculation) and spent €2.1 billion, 3.7% of receipts (our calculation). Their spending fell 2.9% in 2025, while overnight visitors' spending rose 4.9% to €54.6 billion. Foreign overnight travelers stayed 392.8 million nights, 2.3% more than in 2024.
The traveler unit needs care. The bank defines it as a passage across the Italian border, so one person who enters Italy three times in a year counts three times. A traveler is a trip. The 92.2 million is not a count of different people, and no official series counts how many individuals visited Italy in 2025.
The method is a survey. Each month the bank interviews non-residents as they leave Italy and residents as they return, at airports, ports and road and rail crossings. It scales the answers to the total flow using administrative data from border authorities, manual counts at crossings and, more recently, mobile phone data. A methods note from the bank, dated 28 August 2026, puts the 2025 effort at more than 115,000 questionnaires and about 300,000 manual counts. In February 2025 the bank brought the scaling work in-house. It says the core method did not change and aggregates remain consistent, though some finer breakdowns differ. The bank publishes no sampling error or confidence interval for the totals.
Purpose shapes the total. Travel for personal reasons brought in €50.4 billion, 88.9% of receipts, up 8.9%. Holidays alone were €38.1 billion, 67.1% of the total, up 12.2%. Business and work travel fell 20.3% to €6.3 billion. The bank's balance-of-payments tables split the balance the same way. Personal travel showed a surplus of €23.5 billion. Business travel showed a deficit of €823 million, because Italians spent more on work trips abroad than foreign business visitors spent in Italy.
The €56.7 billion is a measure of foreign visitors' spending. It is not tourism revenue in the accounting sense, because it says nothing about costs or profit. It is not tourism's contribution to GDP or value added, which ISTAT estimates in its tourism satellite account, a separate series with a different scope. It excludes domestic tourism. Italian residents accounted for 44% of the nights recorded in Italian tourist accommodation in 2025 (Eurostat tour_occ_ninat, 2025, accessed 4 November 2026; our calculation). Figures from industry bodies that add domestic spending or air fares measure something wider and should not be set beside the Bank of Italy total.
The bank also places Italy in a world table. Citing provisional UN Tourism data, it ranks Italy fifth worldwide for international tourism receipts in 2025, with a 3.4% share, unchanged on 2024. We did not open UN Tourism's own country table.
The Holy Year shaped the growth. A Bank of Italy note puts the spending of foreign overnight visitors who came to Italy because of the Jubilee at €1,615 million. Receipts rose by €2,510 million in 2025, so the Jubilee visitors account for 64% of the increase on the total base (our calculation). The bank's survey release says almost two-thirds; the note says about two-thirds. The full breakdown is in our Jubilee 2025 analysis.
The surplus grew in euros and shrank at constant prices
The Bank of Italy publishes the travel account twice: in current prices and in chained prices with 2020 as the base year. Current prices are the euros actually spent. Chained prices remove the change in prices, so the series moves with the quantity of goods and services bought. In 2025 the two versions told different stories.
At current prices, receipts rose from €54.2 billion to €56.7 billion, expenditure from €33.0 billion to €34.1 billion and the balance from €21.2 billion to €22.7 billion. At 2020 prices, receipts rose from €46.1 billion to €47.5 billion, a gain of 3.1%. Expenditure rose from €27.3 billion to €29.0 billion, a gain of 6.2%. The real balance fell from €18.8 billion to €18.5 billion, a drop of about 1.6% on the rounded figures (our calculation).
The deflators explain the gap. The bank deflates receipts with the national-accounts deflator for consumption in Italy by non-residents. It deflates expenditure with the deflator for Italian residents' consumption abroad. Both come from ISTAT's national accounts. Comparing the nominal and real growth rates, the receipts deflator rose by about 1.5% in 2025 and the expenditure deflator fell by about 2.8% (our calculation from the bank's rates). The bank links the faster real growth of Italians' spending abroad to the euro's appreciation, which it says helped contain the cost of travel.
Put plainly, foreign visitors paid more for what they bought in Italy, and Italians got more for each euro they spent abroad. Prices worked in Italy's favor on the receipts side. On the expenditure side, cheaper trips abroad let Italians buy 6.2% more travel for 3.2% more money. The real balance shrank because Italians' real spending abroad grew twice as fast as foreigners' real spending in Italy. The €1.5 billion gain in the surplus in current prices came from relative prices.
Real does not mean tourist numbers. The chained series measures a volume of purchases valued at 2020 prices. Foreign travelers rose 4.1%, overnight travelers 6.3% and foreign nights 2.3% in 2025, each a different measure again. Spending per night of foreign overnight travelers was €139.1, against €135.6 in 2024, according to the bank's survey tables. A real gain of 3.1% in receipts sits between the growth in nights and the growth in trips. None of the three should be read as the others.
A technical caution applies. Chain-linked volumes are not strictly additive, so a chained balance computed as real receipts minus real expenditure is an approximation. The bank prints it, and the direction is clear. The real surplus did not rise in 2025.
The long view shows the same pattern. In 2019, before the pandemic, receipts were €44.3 billion, expenditure €27.1 billion and the balance €17.2 billion at current prices, according to the long series in the bank's 2025 survey results. At chained 2020 prices the figures were €44.2 billion, €26.9 billion and €17.3 billion. Between 2019 and 2025, receipts rose 28.0% in current prices and 7.5% at constant prices (our calculation). The balance rose 32.0% in current prices and 6.9% at constant prices (our calculation). Most of the post-pandemic growth in Italy's travel earnings is price.
The bank does not publish the deflators in the survey release, only the chained values. The price changes given above are therefore derived from its growth rates, and they are approximate because the published figures are rounded.
The 2026 figures so far extend the nominal story. The bank's monthly commentary for July 2026, with data updated on 13 October 2026, puts July receipts at €8.3 billion, up 6.8% on July 2025. That is a single month. The three-month average to July was up 5.5%. The bank's survey release gives a provisional rise of 5.4% for the first quarter of 2026. No January to July cumulative figure is published in the commentary, and no real-terms monthly figures exist. Our watch on Italy's 2026 tourism totals follows the nights and arrivals series.
| Item | 2019 | 2024 | 2025 | Change 2024-25 | Change 2019-25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receipts (foreign visitors' spending in Italy), current prices | 44.3 | 54.2 | 56.7 | +4.6% | +28.0% |
| Receipts, chained 2020 prices | 44.2 | 46.1 | 47.5 | +3.1% | +7.5% |
| Expenditure (Italians' spending abroad), current prices | 27.1 | 33.0 | 34.1 | +3.2% | +25.8% |
| Expenditure, chained 2020 prices | 26.9 | 27.3 | 29.0 | +6.2% | +7.8% |
| Balance, current prices | 17.2 | 21.2 | 22.7 | +6.9% | +32.0% |
| Balance, chained 2020 prices | 17.3 | 18.8 | 18.5 | -1.6% | +6.9% |
A travel surplus larger than the whole current-account surplus
The travel surplus is large relative to the rest of Italy's external accounts. In the Bank of Italy's balance-of-payments release of 20 October 2026, the current account for calendar 2025 showed a surplus of €15,618 million. The travel balance was €22,671 million. The travel surplus therefore equals 145% of the current-account surplus (our calculation).
The other items explain how that happens. Goods trade showed a surplus of €41.2 billion. Services as a whole showed a deficit of €6.6 billion, even with travel inside them. Without the travel line, services ran a deficit of €29.3 billion (our calculation). Transport alone was €16.0 billion in deficit, and that item includes the international passenger fares that Italians and visitors pay to foreign carriers, along with freight; the release does not split them. Primary income, which covers interest, dividends and wages, was close to balance at minus €360 million. Secondary income, which covers current transfers, showed a deficit of €18.6 billion.
Add up every current-account item except travel and the total is a deficit of about €7.1 billion, or 0.3% of GDP (our calculation). That is an accounting statement. It does not show what the current account would be in a world without foreign tourists, because the goods, services and income flows would all change. Among the items the release lists, travel is the largest surplus after goods.
As a share of GDP, the travel balance was 1.0% in 2025 and the current account 0.7% (our calculations, on ISTAT's nominal GDP of €2,265,003 million published on 22 September 2026). The bank's survey release, written before that GDP figure was published, also gives 1.0% and says the ratio stayed stable at 1%. Receipts were 2.5% of GDP and expenditure 1.5%, unchanged from 2024.
The ratio to the current account depends on the vintage. The travel figures did not change between the June survey release and the October balance-of-payments release. The current account did. On 30 September 2026 the bank revised its balance-of-payments and investment-position statistics back to 2018, mainly in goods, with updated sources and methods. Before that revision, the January 2026 release showed a twelve-month current-account surplus of €27.0 billion to November 2025, a different period and an older vintage. The most recent twelve-month figure, to August 2026, is a surplus of about €12.6 billion, 0.5% of GDP. Anyone citing the 145% should cite the 20 October 2026 release and expect the figure to move with later revisions.
The travel line was also stable across sources. Eurostat's 2024 figure for Italy's travel credits is €54,213 million and the bank's survey gives €54,214 million, a rounding difference. The bank's survey release for 2025 restated 2024 receipts, expenditure and balance without change in current prices. In chained prices, 2024 expenditure moved from €27.2 billion to €27.3 billion and the balance from €18.9 billion to €18.8 billion, changes at the level of rounding.
The surplus also depends on where the money comes from. The bank's survey ranks Germany first among source markets in 2025 with €8.8 billion, followed by the United States with €6.6 billion, the United Kingdom with €5.3 billion, France with €4.6 billion and Spain with €3.0 billion. We cover those markets in separate analyses of German visitors, American visitors and British visitors. Germany matters on both sides of the comparison below, because its residents run the largest travel deficit among the countries checked.
| Item | Credits | Debits | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goods | 567,899 | 526,718 | 41,181 |
| Services, total | 151,042 | 157,659 | -6,617 |
| of which transport (includes international passenger fares and freight) | 15,710 | 31,660 | -15,950 |
| of which travel | 56,724 | 34,053 | 22,671 |
| Travel, personal reasons (balance only) | 23,494 | ||
| Travel, work reasons (balance only) | -823 | ||
| Services excluding travel (our calculation) | 94,318 | 123,606 | -29,288 |
| Primary income | 132,948 | 133,308 | -360 |
| Secondary income | 26,860 | 45,446 | -18,586 |
| Current account | 878,748 | 863,131 | 15,618 |
| Current account excluding travel (our calculation) | 822,024 | 829,078 | -7,053 |
Third by receipts, second by balance, and close to France relative to GDP
National figures are built in different ways, so a fair comparison needs one source. Eurostat's balance-of-payments dataset reports the travel line for each EU country on the same BPM6 definition. We queried it for ten countries for 2025: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands, Croatia and Poland. The United Kingdom has no 2025 data in the dataset, and Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey and the other EU members were not queried. Every rank below holds only among the ten countries checked.
By receipts, Spain led with €105.1 billion, France followed with €77.5 billion and Italy was third with €56.7 billion. Germany was fourth at €37.8 billion, then Portugal at €29.1 billion, Austria at €25.8 billion and Greece at €23.6 billion. Spain's receipts were 1.85 times Italy's (our calculation).
By balance, the order changes. Spain's surplus was €72.0 billion, more than three times Italy's €22.7 billion. Italy was second. Portugal was third with €22.0 billion, Greece fourth with €20.3 billion and France fifth with €20.0 billion. Italy's lead over Portugal was €0.7 billion, over Greece €2.4 billion and over France €2.7 billion (our calculation). Margins that small can change with a revision or a later vintage. Germany ran a deficit of €80.7 billion, the largest among the ten, and the Netherlands a deficit of €6.7 billion. All the others ran surpluses.
France shows why balance and receipts rank differently. French residents spent €57.5 billion abroad in 2025, 74 cents for every euro foreign visitors spent in France, so only 26 cents of each euro of receipts remained as surplus. Italians spent 60 cents abroad per euro of receipts, Spaniards 31 cents, Portuguese 25 cents and Greeks 14 cents. Germans spent €3.14 (our calculations).
Scaled to the size of each economy, Italy and France are close on receipts, and Spain is far ahead. On Eurostat GDP figures for 2025, which are provisional, travel receipts were 2.5% of Italy's GDP, against 2.6% in France and 6.2% in Spain. In Greece they were 9.5% and in Portugal 9.4%. The travel balance was 1.0% of GDP in Italy, 0.7% in France, 4.3% in Spain, 7.1% in Portugal and 8.1% in Greece (our calculations). Italy and France are close on receipts. On the balance, Italy's surplus weighs more in its economy than France's does.
National publishers give slightly different figures. The Banco de España, in a release of 27 February 2026, put Spain's tourism receipts at €105.2 billion and its tourism surplus at €70.3 billion, 4.2% of GDP. Eurostat gives €105,145 million in credits and a balance of €72,030 million. The receipts agree after rounding. The balances differ by about €1.7 billion (our calculation), and neither source explains the gap; it may reflect vintage or definition. The Banque de France, in its balance-of-payments release of 6 February 2026, gives France's 2025 travel balance as €20.2 billion, seasonally and working-day adjusted, without publishing credits or debits in that document. Eurostat's unadjusted balance is €20.0 billion. France's €77.5 billion in receipts comes from Eurostat only.
For Greece and Portugal, Eurostat's figures match what news outlets reported from the central banks. Euronews reported on 24 February 2026 that Greek travel receipts rose 9.4% to €23.6 billion, citing the Bank of Greece; Eurostat gives €23,627 million, up 9.4% on 2024 (our calculation). ECO reported on 19 February 2026 that Portugal's receipts reached €29.13 billion, citing the Banco de Portugal; Eurostat gives €29,119 million. We did not open either central bank's own release.
The balance-of-payments view complements other comparisons. Counting nights in accommodation, the contest between Italy and Spain is closer, as our analysis of Italy and Spain tourism nights shows. Counting money, Spain's lead is wide. Its receipts were 85% higher than Italy's (our calculation) on a common definition.
| Country | Credits (receipts) | Debits (expenditure) | Balance | Credits % of GDP | Balance % of GDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | 105,145 | 33,115 | 72,030 | 6.2% | 4.3% |
| France | 77,491 | 57,480 | 20,011 | 2.6% | 0.7% |
| Italy | 56,724 | 34,053 | 22,671 | 2.5% | 1.0% |
| Germany | 37,772 | 118,515 | -80,743 | 0.8% | -1.8% |
| Portugal | 29,119 | 7,156 | 21,965 | 9.4% | 7.1% |
| Austria | 25,751 | 15,939 | 9,812 | ||
| Greece | 23,627 | 3,339 | 20,289 | 9.5% | 8.1% |
| Netherlands | 22,337 | 29,079 | -6,742 | ||
| Croatia | 15,298 | 2,639 | 12,659 | ||
| Poland | 13,669 | 11,973 | 1,696 |
What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts
Travelers are paying for part of the surplus. The national-accounts price deflator for non-residents' spending in Italy, which the Bank of Italy uses, rose by about 1.5% in 2025 (our calculation from the bank's nominal and real growth rates), and foreign overnight visitors spent €139.1 a night against €135.6 in 2024. Accommodation took 45% of foreign visitors' spending and restaurants 23%. Italians traveling abroad had the opposite experience. Helped by the stronger euro, their spending bought 6.2% more travel for 3.2% more money. The surplus is a measure of the country's external accounts. It is not a guide to what any one trip will cost.
Tourism businesses and investors should read the nominal surplus with its price component. Receipts rose 4.6% in current prices and 3.1% at constant prices in 2025, and since 2019 the real gain is 7.5% against 28.0% nominal (our calculation). Holiday spending rose 12.2% while business travel spending fell 20.3%. The Bank of Italy attributes almost two-thirds of the 2025 growth to visitors who came for the Jubilee, a one-off. The 2026 monthly data show receipts still rising in current prices, with July up 6.8% and the three months to July up 5.5%. No real-terms monthly series exists to show whether volumes followed.
Journalists and analysts will find the figures to cite, with their publisher and price basis, in the box above. Claims not to repeat: €56.7 billion as tourism revenue, profit or tourism GDP; the surplus as evidence of more tourists; the 92.2 million travelers as people; Italy third in Europe for receipts without naming the countries compared; €1.6 billion as exactly two-thirds of growth; July's 6.8% as a year-to-date rate; Spain's surplus as a single figure without naming the source.
Data & sources
Period covered: Calendar year 2025 (balance-of-payments travel line), with monthly data to July 2026
- Banca d'Italia, Statistiche, Indagine sul turismo internazionale 2025 (26 Jun 2026) · Receipts, expenditure and balance in current and chained 2020 prices (Tavole 1-2), travelers, nights, spending by purpose, category and market Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banca d'Italia, Indagine sul turismo internazionale 2025 (press page, 26 Jun 2026) · Headline growth rates, surplus at 1% of GDP, the euro's effect on residents' real spending abroad, Jubilee share of growth Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banca d'Italia, Bilancia dei pagamenti e posizione patrimoniale sull'estero (20 Oct 2026) · Calendar 2025 current account, goods, services, transport and travel credits, debits and balances; travel by purpose; revision note Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banca d'Italia, Doria, "Un'analisi dei flussi turistici internazionali connessi con il Giubileo del 2025" (Metodi e fonti, 28 Aug 2026) · Spending of foreign visitors who came for the Jubilee (€1,615 million) and survey method and sample for 2025 Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banca d'Italia, Il turismo internazionale in luglio 2026 (data updated 13 Oct 2026) · July 2026 receipts and expenditure and three-month averages Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Eurostat, Balance of payments by country, annual data (BPM6), bop_c6_a · Travel credits, debits and balances for 2025 on one definition, queried for ten EU countries (updated 2 Oct 2026) Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Eurostat, GDP and main components, nama_10_gdp · Nominal GDP 2025 (provisional) used for the cross-country ratios; Italy's value matches ISTAT's release of 22 Sep 2026 Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
- Banco de España, Balanza de pagos mensual, diciembre 2025 (27 Feb 2026) · Spain's 2025 tourism receipts (€105.2 billion) and surplus (€70.3 billion, 4.2% of GDP) as published nationally Accessed 4 Nov 2026.
Methodology
We built this analysis from Bank of Italy primary sources, opened on 4 November 2026: its 2025 international tourism survey results and press page (26 June 2026), its balance-of-payments release of 20 October 2026, its note on Jubilee-related flows (28 August 2026) and its monthly commentary for July 2026 (data updated 13 October 2026). For comparison we used Eurostat's balance-of-payments dataset bop_c6_a, item "Services: travel", partner rest of the world, queried for Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands, Croatia and Poland, Eurostat nominal GDP for 2025 and Eurostat's nights in tourist accommodation (tour_occ_ninat) for 2025. Italy's GDP of €2,265,003 million matches ISTAT's national accounts release of 22 September 2026. National releases from the Banco de España (27 February 2026) and the Banque de France (6 February 2026) were used to check the Eurostat figures.
Limitations: (1) The travel line is survey-based, and the bank publishes no confidence interval. (2) Travelers are border crossings, not people. (3) The line excludes international passenger fares, which sit in transport and cannot be separated from freight in the release. (4) Chained-price values are not strictly additive, so the real balance is approximate, and implied price changes are derived from rounded growth rates. (5) The current account was revised on 30 September 2026 and may be revised again. (6) Eurostat GDP for 2025 is provisional, and the UK and several European countries were not in our comparison. (7) Source values were transcribed from the published documents; long-series values other than 2019, 2024 and 2025 were not used.
Contested figures were handled in three ways. Where a national publisher and Eurostat differ, we give both and use Eurostat for ranks so that every country sits on one definition. Where a figure is often given a wider meaning than it has, such as tourism revenue, we state what it counts and what it leaves out. Where a ratio depends on a data vintage, we name the release. Arithmetic of our own is labeled "our calculation" and uses only the figures cited above.
Notes on the data
What does not exist: no official figure for tourism revenue in the sense of income net of costs, and no official count of individual visitors to Italy in 2025. The Bank of Italy's travel line measures spending by non-resident travelers, counted by border crossing, and that is what this article uses; tourism's contribution to GDP is a separate ISTAT series not used here. The bank publishes no sampling error for its survey totals, no deflator values in the survey release and no January to July 2026 cumulative figure. No real-terms monthly series exists. UN Tourism's own country table for 2025 was not available; Italy's fifth place and 3.4% share are as cited by the Bank of Italy. Contested figures: Spain's 2025 tourism surplus is €70.3 billion (Banco de España, 27 Feb 2026) and €72.0 billion (Eurostat), with receipts of €105.2 billion and €105.1 billion; the gap is not explained. France's travel balance is €20.2 billion seasonally adjusted (Banque de France, 6 Feb 2026) and €20.0 billion unadjusted (Eurostat); France's credits of €77.5 billion come from Eurostat only. The Jubilee share of 2025 growth is "almost two-thirds" in the bank's survey release and "about two-thirds" in its Jubilee note; on €1,615 million it is 64% of total receipts growth and about 63% of overnight-spending growth. Chained 2024 expenditure and balance were €27.2 billion and €18.9 billion in the 2024 survey and €27.3 billion and €18.8 billion in the 2025 restatement. The current-account surplus changed with the bank's revision of 30 September 2026, so the 145% ratio is tied to the 20 October 2026 release. Claims that failed or needed correction: "Italy third in Europe" for receipts holds only among the ten countries checked; €56.7 billion described as tourism revenue, income or profit is a different concept; a rise in the surplus read as more tourism is contradicted by the chained figures; July 2026's +6.8% is a single month, not a year-to-date rate. Derived figures marked "our calculation": all 2019-25 changes, the 2024-25 balance changes, the implied deflator changes of about +1.5% and -2.8%, the 64% Jubilee share of receipts growth and the 63% share of overnight-spending growth, the same-day shares, the 44% resident share of nights (Eurostat tour_occ_ninat, 2025), shares of GDP for the travel and current-account balances, services and current account excluding travel, the 145% ratio, the spending ratios per euro of receipts, the cross-country GDP ratios and margins. Self-reported figures: the survey totals rest on what interviewed travelers said they spent; Greek and Portuguese central-bank figures are known to us through Euronews (24 Feb 2026) and ECO (19 Feb 2026), and match Eurostat.
Frequently asked questions
How much revenue does Italy make from tourism?
The Bank of Italy puts foreign visitors' spending in Italy at €56.7 billion in 2025, the travel credits in the balance of payments. That is spending, not revenue net of costs. It excludes international air and sea fares and what Italians spend on holidays at home, and it is not tourism's share of GDP, which ISTAT estimates in a separate satellite account.
What is Italy's tourism surplus?
It is the gap between foreign visitors' spending in Italy and Italians' spending abroad. In 2025 that was €56.7 billion minus €34.1 billion, a surplus of €22.7 billion, or 1.0% of GDP, according to the Bank of Italy.
Did Italy's tourism surplus grow in 2025?
In current prices it rose from €21.2 billion to €22.7 billion. At chained 2020 prices it fell from €18.8 billion to €18.5 billion. Prices for foreign visitors in Italy rose, while the stronger euro helped contain the cost of Italians' trips abroad, and their real spending abroad grew 6.2%.
What does real mean in the Bank of Italy figures?
Real figures are deflated with national-accounts deflators: one for non-residents' consumption in Italy and one for Italian residents' consumption abroad, at chained 2020 prices. They measure the volume of goods and services bought. They do not count tourists; travelers rose 4.1% and foreign nights 2.3% in 2025.
How does the Bank of Italy measure tourism spending?
It interviews travelers at the border every month, non-residents as they leave and residents as they return, and scales the answers using border-authority data, manual counts and mobile phone data. Its 2025 effort involved more than 115,000 questionnaires and about 300,000 manual counts. The bank publishes no margin of error for the totals.
How many tourists visited Italy in 2025?
No official series counts individual visitors. The Bank of Italy estimates 92.2 million foreign travelers in 2025, but each one is a border crossing, so repeat visits count separately. Of those, 61.4 million stayed overnight and 30.8 million came for the day.
How does Italy's tourism income compare with Spain and France?
On Eurostat's harmonized travel data for 2025, Spain received €105.1 billion, France €77.5 billion and Italy €56.7 billion. By balance Spain led with €72.0 billion and Italy was second with €22.7 billion, just ahead of Portugal, Greece and France. The Banco de España gives Spain's surplus as €70.3 billion.
How important is tourism to Italy's balance of payments?
The travel surplus of €22.7 billion was larger than Italy's whole current-account surplus of €15.6 billion in 2025, on the Bank of Italy's release of 20 October 2026. Services as a whole were in deficit by €6.6 billion even with travel included. The ratio depends on the data vintage, because the current account was revised on 30 September 2026.
Is tourism spending in Italy still rising in 2026?
In current prices, yes so far. The Bank of Italy's provisional figure for the first quarter is up 5.4%, and July receipts were €8.3 billion, up 6.8%, with the three months to July up 5.5%. The bank has not published a January to July total, and there are no monthly real-terms figures.