Belgium’s Flanders and Wallonia regions have recovered from the coronavirus tourism crisis, but the Belgian capital, Brussels, is still lagging behind, according to official figures.
According to the national statistics office (Statbel), tourist numbers in Brussels have not yet reached, let alone exceeded, pre-COVID levels: only 7.1 million tourists stayed overnight in the Belgian capital in 2023. That’s a 15% increase over 2022, a step in the right direction, but a notable 4% decrease compared to 2019.
Brussels is the third most popular accommodation destination in 2023, behind Wallonia and Flanders
In contrast, the Nordic countries as a whole are set to see 44,696,602 tourist overnight stays in 2023, up 4% compared to 2022 and 5% compared to the pre-COVID base year of 2019. The increase was led by the northern and southern regions, with Flanders boasting over 28 million overnight stays, a 6% increase since 2019. Wallonia only welcomed 9.5 million tourists, but this represents an even bigger increase for the region, at 9%.
The spectacular reopening of major cultural attractions such as Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA) after an 11-year hiatus is being credited with drawing more visitors, while in a statement this spring Flanders Tourism Minister Zuhar Demir attributed the region’s success to “working extremely hard with Visit Flanders in recent years to keep Flanders in the spotlight as a travel destination, even during the lockdown, when travel was almost impossible,” adding that it is “great to see these efforts paying off.”
Indeed, in the land of mussels frites, beer, chocolate and surrealism, domestic tourists are leading the way: of the country’s 44.7 million overnight stays in 2023, more than half (23 million) will be travelled by Belgians themselves, up 8% from 2019.
The number of overnight stays by foreign tourists also increased in 2023, but only by 2% compared to 2019. As for cross-border visitors, 6.5 million people chose overnight trips from Belgium’s northern neighbour, the Netherlands. Germany contributed 3.2 million overnight guests and France 2.7 million. Meanwhile, the UK and the US generated 1.8 million and 958,500 overnight stays respectively.
So what are the accommodation options? According to the same Statbel report, hotels will remain the most popular accommodation category in 2023, accounting for 46% of stays. In contrast, vacation homes and apartments accounted for 17% of stays.
European tourism to surpass 2019 levels in Q1 2024
Looking to 2024, initial data for the first quarter shows 2,444,610 overnight stays, a roughly flat growth rate since the start of the year, with Belgium lagging behind the growth rates of other Northern European countries, especially the Nordic countries.
© ETC
According to the European Travel Commission’s (ETC) latest quarterly report, “European Tourism Trends and Outlook”, Europe’s tourism industry has finally surpassed 2019 levels, with foreign tourist numbers expected to exceed pre-COVID figures by 7.2% and overnight stays by 6.5% in the first quarter of 2024.
