Close to 5 million guest nights were spent in Greek accommodation prior to pandemic

Guests spent close to 5 million nights in Greek accommodation via Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor in 2019, a year prior to the pandemic hitting the tourism sector, according to Eurostat figures released yesterday.

According to the report, 554 million guests night were spent in EU accommodation overall, translating on average to around 1.5 million guests booking a bed through one of these four platforms.

As a first result of a landmark agreement between the European Commission and the four private collaborative economy platforms, Eurostat published today the very first information on short-stay accommodation offered via these platforms. Unlike the traditional official accommodation statistics collected via business surveys or via local authorities, the data are collected using a previously unexplored channel, namely data on listings and bookings of these platforms.

This first release covers national, regional and city-level data on the number of stays booked and the number of nights spent in 2018 and 2019 in accommodation booked via Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor.

Eurostat confirmed that data for 2020 will be available after this summer and data for the first months of 2021 will be released in autumn.