site.btaTourist Overnight Stays Down in EU, Up in Bulgaria in Q1 of 2025, Y/Y

In January-March 2025, a slight decrease was registered in overnight stays at tourist accommodation establishments in the EU, Eurostat reported on Monday. In Bulgaria, the number of overnight stays went up year on year. 

Foreign visitors logged 1,306,476 overnight stays in Bulgaria in the first quarter of 2025, which is an increase in comparison to the first three months of 2024 when there were 1,203,848 overnight stays, Eurostat data show. Bulgarians spent 3,416,916 nights at accommodation establishments in the country, which is an increase by 3.94% against the 3,287,618 overnight stays in January–March 2024. 

In the first quarter of 2025, there were 452.4 million overnight stays in tourist accommodations across the EU, marking a slight decline of 0.2% compared with the same quarter of 2024, according to the data.

January recorded 139.0 million nights (+3.5% compared with January 2024), February 147.7 million (-0.8%) and March 167.7 million (-2.7%).

The slight decreases in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the first quarter of 2024 can be attributed to holidays falling differently in the calendar year, causing a shift from February to March, school holidays around carnival, and – more significantly – from March to April - Easter.

In the first quarter of 2025, there was a small increase in nights spent by foreign visitors (+1.1% compared with the first quarter of 2024), while for domestic nights, a slight decline (-1.3%) was recorded. The largest increases in overnight stays by foreign visitors were recorded in Latvia (+18.5%), Malta (+17.2%) and Finland (+10.6%). At the other end of the range, the biggest drops of foreign visitors were recorded in Ireland (-23.1%), Croatia (-16.7%) and Sweden (-11.5%).

Foreign visitors accounted for approximately 45.6% of all overnight stays in the first 3 months of 2025, with large differences among EU countries. The biggest share of foreign overnight stays in this period was recorded in Malta (91.2%), Cyprus (85.7%) and Luxembourg (80.4%). By contrast, foreign guests accounted for only one-fifth of overnight stays in Poland (18.6%), Romania (20.1%) and Germany (20.2%).