Leading European city tourism destinations in 2019, by number of bednights

With approximately 85 million bednights, London is the most popular European city destination in the ECM benchmarking report. International visitors to London continually increased over the decade and measured over 21.7 million in 2019. In second place was London’s competitor, Paris - the French capital accounted for around 52 million bednights.

Is London the most popular city?

In the hospitality industry, a bednight measures the occupancy of one person (assigned to one bed) for one night. While London ranked first in terms of bednights, the United Kingdom received a Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) score of 5.2 out of 7.0 in 2019, taking only the fourth place on the list. The TTCI takes into consideration factors such as a country's infrastructure and its policy and enabling conditions. Comparatively, Spain ranked first on the TTCI, but its capital city Madrid ranked only at sixth place in terms of bednights, with approximately 21 million in 2019 and an increase in bednights of 4.3 percent over the previous year.