Expo fuelled Italian tourist boom in 2015, says agency

Rome - Italy had an increase of 5.9 percent in 2015 from the year before in accommodation for tourists to 167,718 with an 0.6 percent rise to 4.8 million beds. Italy is ahead of Germany, Spain and France, but lags behind, among others, Croatia, Austria and Greece according to figures in "Noi Italia, 100 statistiche per capire il Paese in cui viviamo" (We Italy, 100 statistics to understand the country we live in) , published by ISTAT, Italy's national statistics office. The number of tourists hosted by Italy's accommodation establishments rose 4 percent from 2014: Expo Milan 2015 generated a peak flow of tourists in Milan and the surrounding region.

The average amount of time tourists stay continues to shrink, but has stabilised for now at about 3.5 nights. The North-East regions are above the national mean in the average number of nights tourists stay, together with the region of Marche with 5.2 nights and Tuscany with 3.5 nights. Italy also topped the EU mean value of 2.94 nights, but ranked lower than Spain, Greece, Denmark, Croatia, Malta and Cyprus.