The data from Eurostat, which results from a data-sharing agreement concluded in March 2020 by the European Union (EU) statistical office and the four platforms, shows that in 2019, the top city destinations for short-term bookings were the urban areas of Paris (15.1 million overnight stays), Barcelona (11.3 million), Rome (10.4 million), Lisbon (10.5 million) and Madrid (8.3 million).

Porto comes in 10th place on the list, with 5.2 million overnight stays booked through these platforms.

The five most popular destination countries for stays booked through the four private platforms were Spain (112 million nights), France (109 million), Italy (83 million), Germany (40 million nights) and Portugal (33 million).

The 33 million overnight stays in Portugal corresponded in 2019 to 2.6 million stays, with 29 million overnight stays and 2.2 million stays recorded by international tourists.

Considering the regions, Andalusia (Spain) recorded the highest number of overnight stays in 2019 (25.9 million), followed by Jadranska Hrvatska (Croatia), with 24.5 million, and Catalonia (Spain), with 21.4 million.

In the top 20, the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (11.7 million overnight stays) is in 9th place and the Algarve (9.4 million) in 14th.

In the EU, 554 million overnight stays were booked through Airbnb, Booking, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor, representing 53 million stays which, according to Eurostat, means that 100 stays per minute and 150,000 per day were booked, in a universe of about 1.5 million guests who slept in a bed booked through one of these four platforms every day.

On the other hand, two out of every three overnight stays were by a tourist from another country (372 million guest nights, or 67 percent of the total).