Europe is the world’s favorite tourist destination. While this benefits economies in destinations, some of the most popular cities and towns are also experiencing problems with the number of visitors. It has been evident for a few years already that residents in cities like Venice or Barcelona have had enough of the ever growing numbers of tourists that conquer their streets and cafes, and who may not respect local customs. Do tourism travel statistics support this? Let’s take a look at the ratio of visitors compared to the number of inhabitants to identify which European cities really attract the most tourists.

Holidu, an online holiday rental service, has compiled a ranking that takes into account how many visitors per inhabitant a destination receives in a year. Here are the top 10 destinations in Europe (the number means the ratio of tourist arrivals per inhabitant in a year).

1	Dubrovnik	Croatia	27.42
2	Rhodes	Greece	26.33
3	Venice	Italy	21.26
4	Heraklion	Greece	18.43
5	Florence	Italy	13.81
6	Reykjavik	Iceland	12.10
7	Amsterdam	Netherlands	12.09
8	Lisbon	Portugal	11.14
9	Porto	Portugal	10.55
10	Dublin	Ireland	9.07

Destinations with relatively low population top the list. About 27,000 people live in Dubrovnik, 130,000 on the island of Rhodes, and 44,000 in the canal city district of Venice.

The tourist/inhabitant ratio, for instance, 12.09 for Amsterdam  doesn’t mean that that there would be 12 times more tourists in the city all the time. It only indicates that 12 time more tourists in a year have arrived in Amsterdam than there are residents. Tourists may stay one night or longer, but don’t (or shouldn’t) stay the entire year. So, it is possible that during peak seasons like Easter or July and August there are days when tourists outnumber inhabitants in Amsterdam, but during low season inhabitants are likely to outnumber tourists.

The data for the number of tourist arrivals to European cities was sourced from Datamonitor’s Top 100 City Destinations Index 2023 statistics. The population data of cities was extracted from the World Population Review. Russian and Ukrainian cities were not included in the analysis.

Here are the rest of European cities that have higher than one tourist arrival/inhabitant ratio.

11. Athens, Greece 8.99
12. Paris, France 7.24
13. Nice, France 7.01
14. Bruges, Belgium 6.65
15. Prague, Czech Republic 6.32
16. Copenhagen, Denmark 4.99
17. Milan, Italy 4.87
18. Edinburgh, UK 4.51
19. Brussels, Belgium 4.50
20. Barcelona, Spain 4.42

21. Tallinn, Estonia 3.94
22. Vienna, Austria 3.65
23. Rome, Italy 3.37
24. Kraków, Poland 2.74
25. Lyon, France 2.71
26. Munich, Germany 2.69
27. Frankfurt, Germany 2.68
28. Budapest, Hungary 2.59
29. Sevilla, Spain 2.55
30. London, UK 2.49

31. Stockholm, Sweden 2.32
32. Madrid, Spain 1.75
33. Berlin, Germany 1.53
34. Warsaw, Poland 1.37
35. Istanbul, Turkey 1.33
36. Hamburg, Germany 1.05