Swiss, Austrian and Dutch visitors to Italy: one label, three markets that the data keep apart

Three neighbours, three different markets

The Bank of Italy publishes spending and traveller counts for ten countries by name in Tables 3 and 4 of its survey results, released on 26 June 2026. These are the ten countries of residence with the highest total spending in 2025. The Netherlands is sixth with €2,446 million, Austria seventh with €2,123 million and Switzerland eighth with €1,743 million. Together the three account for €6,312 million, 11.1% of the €56,724 million spent by all foreign travellers, and 17.1 million trips, 18.5% of the 92.2 million total, by our calculation.

The survey counts trips at the border and interviews a sample of travellers as they leave. Its trips include same-day visits. Its spending covers what visitors spend inside Italy, including transport within the country, and leaves out international fares. Spending per night covers overnight travellers only. These definitions matter more for these three countries than for any other market the Bank names, because two of them share long land borders with Italy and send large numbers of day visitors.

Subtracting overnight travellers from all travellers gives the number of same-day trips. For Switzerland that is about 5.2 million of 7.1 million trips. For Austria it is about 3.9 million of 6.8 million. For the Netherlands it is about 0.6 million of 3.2 million. The share across all foreign travellers is 33%. These are our figures, and because the Bank rounds traveller counts to 0.1 million, each could be about 0.1 million higher or lower.

Spending follows the same split. Swiss same-day spending, the gap between total and overnight spending, came to €472 million in 2025, 27.1% of everything Swiss residents spent in Italy, by our calculation. For Austria the gap was €278 million, 13.1%. For the Netherlands it was €16 million, under 1%. A Dutch visitor to Italy is almost always an overnight visitor. A Swiss visitor usually is not.

Switzerland: many trips, short ones, falling spend

Swiss spending in Italy fell from €2,057 million in 2023 to €1,726 million in 2024, and edged up 0.9% to €1,743 million in 2025. Over the two years that is a fall of 15.3%, by our calculation. Swiss spending per night fell from €157.9 in 2023 to €142.4 in 2024 and €142.0 in 2025, down 10.1% over two years. Swiss holiday spending fell further, from €1,068 million to €800 million, a fall of 25.1% on our calculation.

The number of Swiss trips moved the other way. It rose from 6.4 million in 2023 to 7.1 million in 2025, while overnight trips fell from 2.1 million to 1.9 million. More trips and fewer overnight stays would fit a shift toward short cross-border visits. Most of the change, though, falls between 2023 and 2024, where the Bank's February 2025 change in how it expands its sample may affect country detail. The overnight change is also within the rounding of the counts, and the survey does not say why. It does not publish where in Switzerland visitors live, so it cannot show which areas the extra trips came from.

Swiss overnight visitors spent about €669 per trip in 2025, by our calculation from overnight spending and overnight travellers. Holidays made up 46% of all Swiss spending, against 70% for Austria and 79% for the Netherlands. The €181 million of Swiss spending outside personal travel, which the Bank's split leaves to business trips, is our subtraction, not a published row.

Austria: shorter stays, more spent each night

Austria's profile is different again. Its total spending fell 11.8% from 2023 to 2025, by our calculation, from €2,406 million to €2,123 million. But spending per night rose every year, from €127.5 to €136.3 and then €146.5. That 14.9% rise over two years, on our arithmetic, put Austria fourth of the ten named countries per night in 2025, ahead of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.

The rise in nightly spending came with shorter stays. The average Austrian overnight stay fell from 5.1 nights in 2023 to 4.6 in 2024 and 4.4 in 2025. Overnight Austrian travellers fell from 3.2 million to 2.9 million over the same period. The result is fewer nights at a higher price. Personal travel spending rebounded in 2025, up 11.6% to €1,956 million, and holiday spending rose 10.2% to €1,485 million.

Austrians made about 3.9 million same-day trips in 2025, on our calculation. That is fewer than the Swiss in absolute terms and as a share, but still well above the all-foreign share of 33%. An Austrian overnight trip came to about €636 in 2025, the lowest of the three and close to the Swiss figure.

The Netherlands: long stays and campsites

The Netherlands is the only one of the three whose spending grew over two years. Dutch spending rose from €2,198 million in 2023 to €2,446 million in 2025, up 11.3% on our calculation. Spending per night rose 11.0% in 2025 alone, to €142.5, after a slight dip in 2024. Dutch overnight visitors spent about €935 per trip, by our calculation, the highest of the three countries and 40% to 47% above the Swiss and Austrian figures.

That figure reflects length of stay more than daily spending. Dutch nightly spending is almost identical to Swiss and only €4 below Austrian. The difference is that the Dutch stay longer, 6.5 nights in 2025, though that was down from 7.2 in 2024. The German market, at 6.5 nights, is the only other European country in the Bank's table with a stay that long.

Eurostat's accommodation data add the detail the Bank does not publish. In 2025, 5,006,241 Dutch nights in Italy were spent at campsites, 38.1% of all Dutch nights in Italian tourist accommodation, by our calculation. For Swiss and Liechtenstein residents the camping share was 19.2%, and for Austrians 18.1%. Hotels took 27.4% of Dutch nights, against 52.6% for the Swiss and Liechtenstein group and 58.6% for Austrians. The Dutch camping share in 2024 was 34.5%.

So the three neighbours called drive markets are three markets. Switzerland is a high-volume, short-trip market whose recorded spending is below its 2023 level. Austria is a short-stay market whose visitors spend more each night. The Netherlands is a long-stay, campsite-heavy market with the highest spending per trip of the three. Any single figure for the group hides all of that.

A drive market the data cannot confirm

The phrase drive market describes how visitors travel. Neither of the two main sources measures that for these countries. The Bank of Italy records the means of transport at the border in Table 9, but only for all foreign travellers combined. In 2025, 43.4% of foreign travellers crossed by road, 40.0 million people, and 53.1% arrived by air. Road travellers spent €14,277 million, 2.6% less than in 2024. There is no row for Switzerland, Austria or the Netherlands.

Eurostat's accommodation statistics count nights by country of residence and type of accommodation. They do not record how guests arrived. Italy's regional statistics offices publish arrivals and nights, not mode of travel. We found no published count of cars crossing the Brenner or the Gotthard broken down by the nationality or residence of the driver.

What the data do show is that road is not the only route. Eurostat's air passenger statistics record 3,206,276 passengers carried between Italy and Switzerland in 2025, 2,882,686 between Italy and Austria and 4,913,193 between Italy and the Netherlands. These counts include Italian residents and every other nationality, travelling in both directions, so they are not visitor counts and cannot be set against the Bank's trips. They show that millions of passengers a year travel between Italy and each of the three countries by air.

The strongest indirect evidence for road travel is the Swiss same-day share. Five million day trips from a neighbouring country are unlikely to be made by plane, though that too is our inference. The Austrian figure points the same way. For the Netherlands, nothing in the published data settles whether most visitors drive, fly or take the train. The high camping share fits a picture of driving holidays, but the statistics do not test it. Without a country split of the Bank's transport table, the label is an assumption.

Access: passes, counters and closures

The traffic data that exist count vehicles, not visitors. On the Austrian side of the Brenner route, the A13 counter at Schönberg recorded an average of 37,211 vehicles a day in 2025, down 4.3% from 38,868 in 2024, according to the Land Tirol traffic report, which uses ASFINAG data. Heavy vehicles, measured in truck equivalents, rose 2.3% to 6,629 a day. Further north on the A12, the Kufstein Süd counter rose 1.3% to 45,571 vehicles a day. These counters include freight, commuters and local traffic as well as tourists of every nationality.

On the Italian side, Autobrennero reported more than 46,000 vehicles a day on the A22 in 2025 and over 5.32 billion kilometres travelled, according to press coverage of the company's results in L'Adige on 15 May 2026. We did not open the company's own report, and the coverage does not make clear whether the daily figure is an average across the whole motorway.

The Gotthard road tunnel carried almost 7.1 million vehicles in 2024, according to a fact sheet from ASTRA, the Swiss federal roads office, published in October 2025. We did not find a 2025 annual figure. In a media release of 30 March 2026, the Swiss motoring club TCS put the queue at the north portal on Good Friday 2025 at 15 kilometres. The record, 25 kilometres, dates from 1998.

Headlines about the Brenner being closed need care. The closures we could document in 2026 were truck driving bans and one demonstration. Austrian driving bans for trucks over 7.5 tonnes applied on 2 June and 3 October 2026, according to trans.info, citing an Austrian federal decree (BGBl. II 77/2026) that we did not open. A demonstration closed the motorway on 30 May 2026, to trucks from 9:00 and to cars from 11:00, with reopening planned for 19:00, according to the German trade title Verkehrsrundschau. None of these was a border closure. The European Commission's list of temporarily reintroduced internal border controls, checked on 2 November 2026, shows no notified control on the Austria–Italy border. Italy's notified controls, from 19 June to 18 December 2026, apply to the Slovenian border only, so none applies on the Italian side of the Italy-Switzerland border or the Austrian border. The list shows no notification by Switzerland. Austria's apply to its borders with Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and Slovenia.

One listed control does affect these markets. Germany has notified controls at its land borders, including those with the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, from 16 September 2026 to 15 March 2027. A drive from the Netherlands to the Brenner crosses Germany. A drive to the Gotthard crosses Germany too, or Belgium, Luxembourg and France. France has notified controls from 1 November 2026 to 30 April 2027 at all its internal borders with Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. Either way, a Dutch driver passes a notified control. We found no primary source on how Dutch visitors choose between the two routes. Rules on the EU's new digital entry checks are a separate subject, covered in our EES and ETIAS explainer.

Two series that should not be compared

The Bank of Italy and Eurostat both name Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, and both publish figures for 2023 to 2025. They measure different things. The Bank counts trips, same-day visits included, from a border survey, and estimates spending. Eurostat counts nights and arrivals registered by tourist accommodation, from hotels and campsites to holiday homes. A same-day Swiss shopper appears in the first and not in the second. A Dutch family staying with friends appears in the first and not in the second.

The levels differ accordingly. Eurostat recorded 13,508,609 nights by residents of Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 2025. The Bank's figures imply about 8.95 million Swiss nights, by our calculation from overnight spending and spending per night. Neither number is wrong. They count different things, and one cannot be used to correct the other.

The trends can even point in opposite directions. Between 2023 and 2024, on the old basis, Eurostat shows nights by Swiss and Liechtenstein residents up 1.4% and Austrian nights up 1.5%. Over the same year the Bank's figures imply Swiss nights down about 15% and Austrian nights down about 22%, on our calculation. We cannot reconcile the two. The Bank says that since February 2025 it has run the expansion of its sample internally, and that while its main aggregates remain consistent with the past, some detailed breakdowns show differences. The Swiss and Austrian falls between 2023 and 2024 sit in the part of the series where that could matter. The Bank does not attribute them to the change, and neither do we.

Eurostat has its own break. Its 2025 figures for Italy include nights in non-business private rentals for the first time, while 2024 has not been restated. Growth from 2024 to 2025 therefore mixes a change in coverage with any change in demand, for every country, and we do not calculate it. The like-for-like comparison stops at 2024. Levels within 2025 share one basis and can be ranked against each other. The UK recorded 17,338,022 nights, residents of Switzerland and Liechtenstein 13,508,609, the Netherlands 13,140,248 and Austria 11,345,518. On that basis, nights from Switzerland and Liechtenstein rose 1.4% in 2024, Austria 1.5% and the Netherlands 3.9%, against 3.4% for Germany and 7.8% for the UK. Over the decade to 2024, ISTAT's figures show Swiss and Liechtenstein nights up 29.5%, Austrian nights up 21.7% and Dutch nights up 6.3%. Dutch growth over ten years was the slowest of the three by a wide margin. The same break affects the national total, as our Italy versus Spain comparison explains.

Two more details catch analysts out. Eurostat has no separate code for Switzerland in this dataset. Its CH_LI code combines Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and a query for Switzerland alone returns nothing. And average stays differ between the sources. Eurostat's registered nights per arrival in 2025 come to 3.47 for Switzerland and Liechtenstein, 3.46 for Austria and 4.44 for the Netherlands, on our arithmetic. The Bank's survey stays are 4.7, 4.4 and 6.5 nights. The first counts each accommodation booking as an arrival. The second counts each trip.

The camping figures carry their own warning. Camping nights rose sharply in 2025 for all three countries: by 29.5% for the Netherlands, 34.3% for Austria and 18.9% for Switzerland and Liechtenstein, on our arithmetic. In 2024 Dutch camping nights had dipped 1.7%. We found no explanation for the 2025 jump. It could reflect more campers, a change in how campsites report, or a change in classification that arrived with the new basis. Until ISTAT or Eurostat explains it, the jump should not be described as growth in camping.

Where they go: South Tyrol, Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore

None of the national sources says where in Italy these visitors stay. The Bank publishes spending by macro-area only for all foreign travellers combined. Regional and local statistics fill part of the gap, each with its own definitions.

South Tyrol. A table in a report by the economic research institute WIFO tabulates official ASTAT figures. It shows 4,726,243 nights by residents of Switzerland and Liechtenstein in South Tyrol in 2024, 12.7% of all nights in the province, by our calculation. That was up from 3,895,632 in 2023 and 2,972,129 in 2022. Set against Eurostat's 12,065,417 Swiss and Liechtenstein nights in Italy in 2024, South Tyrol's figure is equal to 39.2% of the national total, on our arithmetic. That comparison links two publishers. Both count nights in registered accommodation, but we have not checked that their definitions match. The 21% rise in Swiss nights in 2024 is unexplained, and we have not seen ASTAT's own table. The same WIFO table shows 1,399,833 Austrian nights in 2024, 3.8% of the provincial total, and 1,667,194 nights for Benelux, which includes Belgium and Luxembourg as well as the Netherlands. Germany remains the dominant market. In 2025 it accounted for 44.9% of South Tyrol's 38.2 million nights, according to local press coverage of ASTAT data. Our Dolomites travel guide covers the area.

Lake Garda. The Verona Chamber of Commerce's 2026 tourism report gives provisional 2025 figures for the Veneto shore of the lake, from Veneto Region and ISTAT data that include non-commercial rentals from January 2025. The Veneto shore recorded 14,953,755 nights, of which about 12.7 million, 85.2%, were by foreign visitors. Germany came first with about 6.4 million nights, 49.9% of foreign nights. The UK ranked third and Austria fourth. The report's text indicates that the Netherlands is the second market in the lakeside municipalities, but we found no figure for it. For the hinterland the report gives percentages only: Austrian nights up 13.6% on 2024 and Swiss nights up 14.1%. These figures cover one shore of a lake divided between three regions. The Lombardy and Trentino shores are counted separately. See our Lake Garda travel guide.

Lake Maggiore. The Distretto dei Laghi, the tourism district for Lake Maggiore, Lake Orta and Mergozzo, quotes Piedmont's regional tourism observatory in its 2025 annual report. It records 4,932,057 nights, 79% of them by foreign visitors. By nights, Germany ranks first, Italy second, the Netherlands third and Switzerland with Liechtenstein fourth, ahead of France. Austria is not ranked. The report gives no absolute figures for the Dutch or Swiss. These are Piedmont figures only, and the Lombardy shore of Lake Maggiore is not included.

The Bank's holiday-type table hints at the national picture for all foreign visitors, without any country split. In 2025 foreign spending on lake holidays fell 7.3% to €3,050 million, while spending on mountain holidays rose 53.9% to €3,588 million. Whether Swiss, Austrian or Dutch visitors contributed to either movement is not published. For Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a regional councillor was reported by ANSA in January 2025 as citing about 1.8 million Austrian arrivals in 2024. We found no statistical release behind that figure.

What this means for travellers, businesses and analysts

For travellers, the practical numbers are about roads and costs. The Brenner route carries about 37,000 vehicles a day on the Austrian A13 counter, and the closures we documented in 2026 were truck bans and a demonstration with set hours, announced in advance. The Austrian A13 Brenner toll for a single car trip was €12 in 2025, according to the German motoring club ADAC, and auto motor und sport, in an undated report, put it 50 cents higher in 2026. Italian motorway tolls rose about 1.5% from 1 January 2026, with Autobrennero up 1.46%, according to press reports of a ministry note. A Swiss motorway vignette has cost CHF 40, though we did not confirm the 2026 price. Germany's land-border controls run until 15 March 2027 and France's until 30 April 2027, which matters for anyone driving from the Netherlands. Local tourist taxes come on top, and our guide to Italy's tourist tax sets out the 2026 rates.

For businesses, the three markets call for three different offers. Swiss residents come often and briefly, and more than a quarter of their spending in Italy is made on same-day trips. That favours retail, restaurants and short breaks near the border. Austrian visitors stay fewer nights than they used to and spend more on each one. Dutch visitors stay longest, spend the most per trip of the three and put 38.1% of their registered nights into campsites in 2025, against 34.5% in 2024 on the old basis. A campsite on Lake Garda or Lake Maggiore and a hotel in a South Tyrol valley are courting different neighbours. None of the published data says whether these visitors arrive by car, so a business that assumes it should check its own booking data.

For analysts, each source answers one kind of question. Use the Bank of Italy for trips and spending, Eurostat for registered nights, and neither for how visitors travel. The figures in the quick-reference panel above can be cited with their series named. Do not compute Eurostat growth from 2024 to 2025, label CH_LI as Switzerland, divide Eurostat nights by Bank trips, or describe the 2025 camping jump as a boom. For the national context, our 2026 record watch tracks Italy's totals as they are published.