Latvia's 'tourism intensity' is low by EU standards

Though Latvia's tourist numbers saw growth in 2025, it finds itself close to the bottom of the EU's rankings when it comes to 'tourism intensity', which is the ratio of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments relative to the total permanent resident population.

The EU recorded an average of 7.0 guest nights per year, up from the 6.7 ratio registered in 2024, but Latvia's ratio was less than half of this. 

At country level, the highest ratios were registered in Croatia (24.5 nights per inhabitant), Malta (21.7) and Cyprus (19.4), followed by Greece (15.1) and Austria (14.6). On the other end, Romania registered the lowest ratio, with 1.6 nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments per inhabitant, followed by Latvia (2.7), Poland (2.9) and Slovakia (2.9). 

Tourism intensity is closely related to tourism sustainability; this indicator is also included in Eurostat’s recently released set of harmonised European indicators on the sustainability of tourism.

 

Data show that in 2025, 80.9% (2.5 billion) of nights in tourist accommodation were spent by domestic tourists or tourists from other EU countries (intra-EU) and 10.4% by tourists from other European countries. 

Tourists from the Americas (North, Central and South) accounted for 4.9% of nights (155.5 million), while guests from Asia represented 2.6% (81.6 million), Oceania 0.5% (15.2 million) and Africa 0.4% (12.9 million). 

Between 2024 and 2025, nights spent by tourists from Asia (+15.4%) and Africa (+13.7%) increased the most. And when compared with 2015, nights spent by tourists from the Americas more than doubled (+101.9%), from nearly 77 million. 

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