A closer look at the figures on overnight stays reveals the great impact of international visitors on the city’s tourist sector. Indeed, international tourists in hotels of the metropolitan city of Rome completed more than 21 million overnight stays in 2018. In this context, visitors from the U.S. played a key role, considering that they completed roughly a quarter of all international overnight stays in hotel facilities. Travelers from the UK and Germany expanded the list, while Japanese tourists were in the lead among non-European visitors.
Focusing on the hotel industry, data show that most hotel facilities in Rome were rated as three-star and four-star as of 2018. Furthermore, despite its popularity, Rome was not the most expensive city in Italy in terms of average price per night in a four-star hotel. In fact, it was cheaper to book a four-star hotel in the Italian capital than in Venice, Florence, Turin or Milan as of May 2019. When considering the non-hotel sector of the Eternal City, as Rome is nicknamed, it had the highest number of Airbnb listings in Italy as of November 2019. In the same period, most of the Airbnb listings in Rome were entire homes or apartments.
Overall, the artistic and historical heritage of the city is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of tourism in Rome. State museums in the province of Rome registered an income of roughly 83 million euros in 2018. In this respect, the complex of the Colosseum, Roman Forum and the archeological area of the Palatine Hill are by far the most renowned attraction, visited by over 7.6 million tourists in 2018.
