With 13 million visitors and nearly 5 million arrivals, the Italian province of Florence talks about the record year of 2014.
“The data,” explains the mayor of Florence city, Dario Nardella, “highlighted extremely positive values of growth, about 3.5%.” According to the data, the presence of people in the metropolitan area saw remarkable growth of the number of people entering the city (+140,000, +3%) and staying in the city (+428,000 overnight accommodations, +3.4%) on account of tourists from foreign countries, however Italians also contributed to the overall numbers.
Nardella underlined that “the growth from foreign demand in 2014 is up 2.4% compared to the previous year, with a number of 9.5 million overnight stays. National tourism reports a growth of 6.4% compared to 2013.”
Among different nationalities, the amount of tourists from the United States increased by +1.7%, confirming Americans as the greatest number of foreign tourists visiting the city. Of note is the increased number of tourists from China as well – up by 16.6%.
The non-hotel accommodations sector saw major growth (+4.4%); the hotel sector grew at an encouraging 2.9%, with emphasis on mid and high-end hotels (3, 4 and 5 stars according to the Italian evaluation system).
The city of Florence alone recorded 8.5 million overnight stays in 2014. The arrivals in the city grew by 2.5% (87,000 people) as well as tourist numbers (+4.7%) and there has been a slight increase in average visit duration (2.5 nights).