Italy has never lacked visitors. The challenge is where they go. A new study by The European House – Ambrosetti, developed with Airbnb, suggests that Italy’s next great tourism opportunity may not be in its already crowded icons, but in the thousands of small towns that remain outside the main travel routes.
In 2024, Italy recorded about 140 million tourist arrivals. Yet those flows were highly concentrated: roughly 20% of Italian municipalities attracted 90.4% of national arrivals, while the 20 most visited cities alone accounted for 32% of the total.
