Five-star hotels have more than doubled overnight stays since 2008. Rome leads the ranking, but luxury tourism remains concentrated in 17 provinces.
Euronews – Luxury tourism is becoming increasingly valuable for the Italian economy. In 2025 five-star and five-star luxury hotels generated 10.4 billion euro in direct tourist spending, equal to 17.3 per cent of the entire turnover of the hotel sector, estimated at just over 60 billion euro. And the gap with mid-range accommodation is significant: each overnight stay in a luxury hotel generates an average of 702 euro in tourist spending, compared with 209 euro for the hotel average.
The growth is captured by a study by the Demoskopika institute, devoted to the high-end segment and previewed by ANSA. The figures show a market that has expanded much more rapidly than the rest of Italian hospitality: between 2008 and 2025 overnight stays in luxury hotels increased by 111.1 per cent, while those in all hotel establishments grew by only 14.5 per cent.
In 2025 overnight stays in five-star establishments reached almost 14.9 million, with more than 4.9 million arrivals. Compared with 2024, arrivals were up 5 per cent and overnight stays 5.7 per cent. This expansion confirms the growing role of international customers with higher spending power, but also highlights a territorial distribution that is still highly uneven.
Italy’s high-end hospitality map is dominated by a handful of major hubs. According to the Elite Index (Exclusive Luxury & International Tourism Evaluation) compiled by Demoskopika, the leading regions are Lazio, Trentino-Alto Adige, Campania, Valle d'Aosta and Sardinia.
At provincial level, Rome is the main destination and alone accounts for 19.7 per cent of overnight stays in high-end hotels. Together with Bolzano, Venice, Florence and Milan, it concentrates 53.4 per cent of overnight stays nationwide. If the focus is widened to the 17 main luxury hubs identified by the research, the share rises to 79.2 per cent.
Another figure captures territorial disparities even more clearly: 25 Italian provinces do not have a single five-star hotel. In 2025 there were 809 establishments in this category, 38 more than the previous year, offering almost 110,000 beds. However, they account for only 4.8 per cent of national hotel capacity.
