The total bednights in Europe grew by 4.2 percent in 2018 as against the previous year, as per The ECM Benchmarking Report. The growth in total bednights is lower than the previous year at 7.4 percent. Petra Stusek, ECM President said, that since a sustainable visitor economy is the common goal of European Cities, they take this as a sign of healthy development.
The 15th edition of the European Cities Marketing Benchmarking Report includes 119 European cities and provides benchmarking insight into bednights sourced from Europe’s main markets as well as analyses of city tourism compared to national tourism, bed supply, occupancy, and tourism densities.
The source markets that grew most in 2018 are China (+9.6 percent, Spain (+8.5 percent), and the United States (+6.4 percent). Between 2014 and 2018, the US source market is the most dynamic one with an average growth of 9.4 percent in bednights, of which 64.1% are in ECM report cities.
Petra Stusek said that the past five years have shown a positive average annual growth rate of bednights in both the ECM report’s cities (+4.1%) as well as in the EU28 nations (+4.0 percent). City tourism bednights have again surpassed national tourism bednights, proving cities are the dominant geographical focus of European tourism, especially for short break and congress and/or convention’s segments.
Some of the foreign markets observed in the report are definitely more attracted by European Cities than the countries taken as a whole: 88.8 per cent of Japanese tourists in Europe stayed in 2018 in ECM cities whereas, 10.3 per cent German tourists stay in ECM report cities.
The growth in terms of bednights is also related to the growth rate of top performing cities. Of these top performing cities, Istanbul showed an increase of more than 20 per cent, followed by Munich and Paris that showed an increase of more than 9 per cent.
