Italy's top-end hotel sector is having a moment. New research from Demoskopika, previewed by ANSA, puts direct tourist spending in five-star and five-star luxury hotels at €10.4 billion in 2025 — 17.3% of the entire hotel sector's turnover. The gap with mid-range accommodation is stark: a night in a luxury hotel generates an average of €702 in tourist spending, against just €209 across hotels generally.
The segment is growing far faster than the rest of Italian hospitality. Overnight stays in luxury hotels jumped 111% between 2008 and 2025, while the hotel sector overall grew only 14.5%. Last year five-star properties welcomed almost 4.9 million arrivals and nearly 14.9 million overnight stays, up around 5% on 2024 — and the number of five-star hotels itself rose by 38 to 809, offering roughly 110,000 beds. Even so, that's just 4.8% of national hotel capacity.
Where does all this money land? Concentrated in a handful of places. Rome alone takes 19.7% of luxury overnight stays; add Bolzano, Venice, Florence and Milan and you're at 53.4%. Widen it to the 17 main luxury hubs identified by the study and the share hits 79.2%. Meanwhile, 25 Italian provinces don't have a single five-star hotel. By region, Lazio leads with €2.3 billion in luxury spending (21.7% of the total), followed by Trentino-Alto Adige (€1.7bn), Veneto (€1.4bn), Lombardy (€1.3bn) and Tuscany (€1bn).
There's a competitive edge to this, too. Italy logged about 535 million overnight stays in 2025 across all accommodation, ahead of Spain (513m), France (472m) and Germany (440m) — but Spain beats Italy on tourism intensity, with 10.4 nights per inhabitant versus Italy's 9.1. On investment, Italy's hotel market drew around €1.8 billion, less than the UK's €4 billion or Spain's €3.3 billion. And the demand signal is clear across Europe: revenue per available room rose 3.8% in upscale hotels while falling 1.9% in budget ones.
Who's actually paying? Eleven markets — led by Germany (€6.39 billion) and the United States (€4.69 billion) — account for 62.2% of foreign overnight stays in Italian hotels, worth an estimated €21.4 billion overall.
Demoskopika's point is that the problem isn't just building more five-star hotels, but filling the ones that exist and keeping them open beyond high season. Luxury bed occupancy sits well below the national average of 37.1%, particularly in the south, where much of the supply is new or strongly seasonal. For travellers, that means better availability — and potentially better value — outside the Rome-Venice-Florence circuit, in regions actively trying to grow their high-end offer.
