STORY: Italy hosts record-breaking number of tourists in 2023
SHOOTING TIME: June 4, 2024
DATELINE: June 5, 2024
LENGTH: 00:00:47
LOCATION: Rome
CATEGORY: ECONOMY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of tourists in Rome

STORYLINE:

Italy set an all-time record for tourist arrivals last year, with numbers surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time, the government's statistics entity reported Tuesday.
   
ISTAT, the Italian Statistics Institute, said the country hosted more than 134 million tourists in 2023, amounting to a total of more than 450 million overnight stays. This represents 3 million more arrivals and 14.5 million more overnight stays than in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for increases of 2.3 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively.
   
Compared to 2022, the tourism figures rose by 13.4 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively.
   
According to the data, the most popular Italian region for tourism last year was Veneto, famous for the canal city of Venice. Veneto attracted 21.1 million tourists last year, ahead of Lombardy, which attracted 17.7 million, and the central Italian region of Tuscany, with 14.7 million.
   
Early indications from tourism sector groups are that tourist arrivals for 2024 could surpass the record levels from last year.
   
Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Rome.
(XHTV)