Greece has remained one of the favorite destinations for tourists for many years, and new data shows that this is more true today than ever. The regions of the South Aegean Sea and the Ionian Islands in Greece demonstrated the highest tourist load among all regions of the European Union in 2024, according to Eurostat data analyzed by Greek Reporter (source in English). Statistics show that, on average, tourists spent more nights there per resident than anywhere else in the EU. The South Aegean Sea region, which includes popular islands such as Santorini, Rhodes, and Kos, proved to be particularly in demand: last year, there were 127.2 tourist overnight stays per resident. A total of over 41.5 million overnight stays were recorded here, and with a population of approximately 326,000, this represents the largest gap between the number of tourists and local residents in the entire EU. The Ionian Islands, including Corfu and Zakynthos, ranked second: there were 102.6 overnight stays per resident, with a total of 20.5 million overnight stays and a population of around 200,000. No other region in the study came close to these figures. ## ## Which Other Regions of Europe Experience Significant Tourist Load? In other regions, the Italian province of Bolzano, known as the gateway to the Dolomites in the Italian Alps, recorded 68.9 overnight stays per resident. It is followed by the Adriatic coast of Croatia, home to the bustling Dubrovnik and Split: here, there are 67.5 overnight stays per resident, while in the Spanish Balearic Islands, including Ibiza and Mallorca, this figure is 60. Returning to Greece, the country's largest island, Crete, ranked sixth in terms of tourist load, with 55.6 overnight stays per resident. Overall, across EU countries, most regions record fewer than 15 overnight stays per resident. Even the third Greek region, the North Aegean Sea, showed only 14.9 overnight stays per resident, but this was enough to secure 24th place in the ranking. At the other end of the scale, the Masovian Voivodeship, the region around Warsaw in Poland, records only 0.7 overnight stays per resident, but the last place is still held by Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean, which, surprisingly, is a territory of the EU: there, the figure is just 0.5 overnight stays per resident.
