The Bank of Italy has published its 2025 international tourism survey, showing that Italy's tourism balance of payments surplus increased to EUR 22.7 billion from EUR 21.2 billion in 2024, while remaining stable at 1.0 percent of GDP. The improvement was driven by a 4.6 percent rise in spending by foreign travellers in Italy to EUR 56.7 billion. Nearly two-thirds of that increase was attributable to visitors travelling to Italy for the 2025 Jubilee. Spending by Italian travellers abroad also rose, increasing 3.2 percent in nominal terms to EUR 34.1 billion. Inbound growth reflected both a higher number of overnight visitors and higher spending per night, even though average trip length shortened. Personal travel accounted for all of the increase in tourism receipts, led by cultural trips and stays in art cities, with strong growth also in mountain destinations. The largest contributions came from travellers from Asia, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany. Outbound spending rose 6.2 percent in real terms as appreciation of the euro helped contain travel costs outside the euro area, with the strongest increase in holiday travel, especially cultural and seaside trips, while spending on business travel declined. Provisional data for the first quarter of 2026 indicate that the tourism surplus increased further. Spending by foreign travellers in Italy rose 5.4 percent from the same period of 2025, supported by flows linked to the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and partly offset by a decline in arrivals from the Middle East following the start of the conflict in the Persian Gulf.

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