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Venice tourist statisticsThe City of Venice's "Yearbook of Tourism" is packed with interesting data, and the month-by-month numbers can help you avoid peak-season visitor crowds.
Updated May, 2024 Tourism statistics may sound like a dry (and esoteric) topic, but the numbers can be illuminating--and sometimes they can even be useful in planning your trip. For example, if you hate crowds, tourism statistics can help you find the months when visitor mobs are at a minimum. And if you're wondering how much to budget, knowing what other travelers are spending can make it easier to gauge what a visit will cost. In this article, we'll share a sampling of official numbers from the City of Venice's latest Yearbook of Tourism report. (The statistics are from 2022. You can download the full report via a link at the end of this article.) How many visitors come to Venice:International news media often publish unsourced guesstimates of tourism in Venice, with over-the-top numbers ranging from 20 to 100 million tourists per year. The Venice Tourism Department's officially recorded numbers are considerably smaller:
Where they come from:International travelers exceed domestic tourists by a significant margin. The top countries of origin for tourist arrivals are:
Altogether, foreigners represent 81.3% of tourist arrivals, compared to 18.7% for Italians.
When they visit:As you might guess, Venice is much quieter from December through February than in the warmer months, making winter in Venice delightful if you don't mind a bit of chill and want to avoid the crowds. Here's a month-by-month breakdown of tourist arrivals:
It's worth noting that the busiest and least busy months for international visitors are July and January, while the busiest and least busy months for Italian tourists are April and January. Closer examination of the official data shows that overnight stays by foreigners build steadily from spring until late summer (dropping off gradually in September and October). In contrast, Italian tourist occupancies peak in April, fall sharply in May, and build to a second peak from August through October. Food for thought: China, Japan, and South Korea were among Venice's top 10 source markets before 2020, when the worldwide health crisis hit. If and when Asian visitors resume international travel on their previous scale, total tourist arrivals in Venice are likely to set new records.
How they arrive:Determining how visitors arrive is tricky, because some numbers (such as automobile arrivals) are hard to count and other numbers (such as airport traffic) include tourists, business travelers, and residents of Northeastern Italy who may be traveling elsewhere in the region. Also, transportation statistics represent passenger movements--i.e., arrivals and departures--not just arrivals. By air: 14,816,325. Of these passengers, 9,319,156 used Venice Marco Polo Airport in 2019, while 2,635,172 passed through Treviso Airport (which is served mostly by the low-cost carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air). By ship: In 2019, passenger traffic through the Port of Venice totaled 1,822,703. That number has plummeted since 2021, when all but the smallest cruise ships were banned from central Venice. Total ship passenger traffic in 2022 was only 431,373 (a number that includes guests on ocean cruises, river cruises, and international ferries). down 76% from 2019. Ocean cruising had the biggest drop, with an 82.7% decline. By train, bus, or car: Venice's Tourism Department doesn't publish comprehensive numbers for rail and road arrivals, but an appendix to the official statistics includes these figures from a Venezia Unica online survey of Venice tourists in 2017*: Modes of transportation (all modes)
Where (and for how long) visitors stay:
Of the visitors who stayed in the Metropolitan City of Venice during 2019, 2,914,425 chose hotels and 1,732,935 stayed in other accommodations such as vacation apartments, hostels, religious guesthouses, and campgrounds. How much visitors spend:As a traveler, you probably aren't obsessed with what other people spend, but the numbers here may be useful in helping you gauge what to expect. Earlier, we mentioned the Venezia Unica online survey of visitors in 2017. The figures in this section are derived from that survey. For overnight visitors in 2017, expenditures were as follows:
For day visitors (a.k.a. "daytrippers), expenditures were obviously less. (The Yearbook of Tourism report breaks the numbers down further by international and domestic travelers.)
What travelers think of Venice after visiting:In the 2017 Venezia Unica survey cited in the Yearbook of Tourism, scores for overall satisfaction were remarkably high. On a scale of 1 to 5 from "very bad" to "excellent", ratings after the visit were as follows:
The "intend to return" figures are also noteworthy:
The bottom line is that, despite peak-season crowds (especially in popular areas such as the Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge), visitors to Venice have an enjoyable experience and would like to visit the city again.
Our caveats and personal observations:
Downloadable source material:
Yearbook of Tourism 2022 (Città di Venezia) About the author:
Durant Imboden has
written about Venice, Italy since 1996.
He covered Venice and European travel at About.com for 4-1/2 years before launching
Europe for Visitors (including
Venice for Visitors) with Cheryl
Imboden in 2001. |
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