ISTAT, the Italian Statistics Institute, said the country hosted more than 134 million tourists in 2023, amounting to a total of more than 450 million overnight stays. This represents 3 million more arrivals and 14.5 million more overnight stays than in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for increases of 2.3 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively.
Compared to 2022, the tourism figures rose by 13.4 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively.
According to the data, the most popular Italian region for tourism last year was Veneto, famous for the canal city of Venice. Veneto attracted 21.1 million tourists last year, ahead of Lombardy, which attracted 17.7 million, and the central Italian region of Tuscany, with 14.7 million.
Early indications from tourism sector groups are that tourist arrivals for 2024 could surpass the record levels from last year.
At the same time, Italy is battling to protect the country from some of the negative impacts of overtourism. Venice has started charging day trippers to the city a fee for visits at the most popular parts of the year. The city has also banned the arrival of the largest cruise ships in the city's main harbor.
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