With 171.8 million arrivals expected between July and August, including over 89 million international guests, summer 2026 opens under the best auspices for Italian tourism (ISNART-Unioncamere, 2026). This acceleration confirms the trend of the first quarter of the year, which already closed with 71.6 million arrivals, a 16% growth compared to 2025. Yet, tourist flows are redrawing the map of the country: emerging destinations are growing in the double digits and small villages register a +7% increase in stays, signaling a demand increasingly oriented toward authentic, territorially widespread experiences, far from mass destinations. According to Valerio Mancini, “it is no longer just about increasing the total number of visitors, but about redistributing tourism value across the territory.”
These are among the insights contained in the report “Italy beyond overtourism: proximity tourism redraws the new destinations of 2026”, edited by Valerio Mancini, Director of the Divulgative Research Center of Rome Business School. The challenge for 2026 will therefore be to transform quantitative growth into a territorial redistribution strategy, reducing pressure on mature destinations and strengthening the role of emerging locations.
In 2025, tourism generated an impact of €237.4 billion on GDP and employed 13.2% of the national workforce (ENIT, BIT 2026). Arrivals recorded a slight drop of 0.9% compared to 2024, while overnight stays grew by 2.3%, reaching 476.9 million (ISTAT, 2026): Italian tourists reduced their trips while the foreign component grew on both fronts, with 255 million international stays in the first eleven months and an international tourism expenditure of €60.4 billion, up 4.7% (ENIT, 2026). For 2026, Demoskopika projections forecast 141.2 million arrivals and 478.6 million stays, with domestic demand recovering after a weak two-year period. “Italian tourism is emerging from the post-pandemic rebound phase to enter a more mature season: growth is there, but it is selective, and it rewards territories that know how to build their own identity,” states Mancini.
Major regions continue to dominate by volume: Lazio exceeded 82 million stays in 2025, driven by the Jubilee; Veneto confirmed its position with over 81 million; Naples and Campania recorded one of the fastest growths in the country, with over 18 million visitors. Tuscany maintains the highest average per capita expenditure for international tourism in Italy, exceeding €1,000 per visitor (ISTAT/ENIT, 2025).
“The future of Italian tourism competitiveness will not be measured by the number of arrivals, but by the ability to generate widespread value across the territory.”
However, regions like Abruzzo, Molise, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and Basilicata recorded increases above the national average between 2023 and 2025, thanks to the demand for nature, outdoor, and food and wine tourism, at more competitive costs and with less pressure on urban centers (ENIT, 2025). The phenomenon clearly emerges in the village sector as well: tourist stays grew by 7% in 2025, while online searches related to small towns reached 94 million queries in 2024 alone, a 52% increase compared to the previous year.
The transformation of booking and consumption behaviors is also contributing to redrawing the map. According to Booking Holdings (2025), over 40% of European tourist bookings are made within 30 days of departure: a rising volatility that favors flexible and proximity destinations over major locations that require advance planning. According to Deloitte (2025), over 70% of bookings today take place via digital platforms, a market increasingly driven by algorithms, reviews, dynamic pricing, and social media, with Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube progressively guiding travelers toward lesser-known destinations. Concurrently, the demand for sustainability is growing: eco-friendly facilities, cycling tourism, and slow tourism are gaining ground across the peninsula (ENIT, 2025). On the cruise front, Italian ports recorded over 14 million movements in 2025, with global traffic expected at 37 million passengers in 2026 (CLIA, 2025), a booming sector that nevertheless poses the same unresolved issues of overtourism, as demonstrated by the restriction on large ships in Venice’s San Marco basin.
The comparison with Spain and France highlights the structural bottleneck. In 2025, Spain welcomed 96.8 million international tourists, with an international tourism expenditure of €134.7 billion, up 6.8% compared to 2024 (INE/EGATUR, 2026), and confirmed its position as the world’s second destination in the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Development Index 2024, after the United States. France surpassed the milestone of 100 million international visitors, focusing on a strategy centered on value rather than volume: cultural tourism, luxury, gastronomy, and major events, with rising average spending per visitor (Atout France, 2025). “Italy ranks ninth in the same WEF index, not due to a lack of attractiveness, but due to a lower capacity to turn it into a system,” comments Mancini.
Indeed, Spain has built an integrated country-strategy where international promotion, infrastructure, data, and seasonal adjustment interact in a coordinated manner. France has turned tourism into an extension of its national brand, integrating it with fashion, culture, and the luxury industry. Italy possesses a territorial heritage that is perhaps even more articulated than both, but continues to suffer from structural weaknesses in governance: strong regional fragmentation, limited integration between mobility, promotion, and data, and uneven investments (OECD, 2025).
The competitiveness of Italian tourism in 2026 will therefore depend on the ability to move from a logic of isolated destinations to a system-wide logic: less dependence on the main hubs of mass tourism, greater enhancement of emerging destinations, more extensive use of data, and stronger connections between mobility, culture, environment, businesses, and public policies. In this perspective, tourism is not just an economic sector, but a true infrastructure for national competitiveness.
Furthermore, overtourism is no longer just a management problem: it produces economic, environmental, and social effects that are difficult to reverse, from urban congestion to rising housing costs, from the loss of residents to the transformation of historical centers into spaces oriented exclusively toward tourist consumption. Venice is the symbolic Italian case, but similar dynamics are observed in Florence, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Dubrovnik. The strategic shift for Italy revolves around four priorities: