Free tool

Seasonality thermometer for an Italian province

Choose an Italian province and see month by month how concentrated tourism is, with official ISTAT data and a comparison with the European Union.

How concentrated tourism is in an Italian province, month by month, with official ISTAT data and the same indicators Eurostat uses for the European Union.

Loading the list of provinces...

Choose a province: the page immediately shows the latest year released, with monthly nights, peak months and a comparison with the European Union. For an example, load Lecce in 2024 from the «Worked example» box.

Worked example

Lecce in 2024: 5,800,442 nights, Gini 0.579, and the two peak months account for 54.1% of the year.

How it is calculated

  • Nights are the nights spent in tourist accommodation, hotels and non-hotels, by guests resident in Italy and abroad.
  • Share of the peak months = sum of the two (or three) highest months / total for the year. The peak months are the highest of your own curve, not necessarily July and August.
  • Gini = Σᵢ Σⱼ |xᵢ - xⱼ| / (2 · 12² · mean), without the small-sample correction: this is the form that reproduces the values published by Eurostat.
  • Coefficient of variation = population standard deviation / mean: the twelve months are the whole year, not a sample.
  • Peak: up to three of the highest months, only if they reach at least 1.25 times the monthly average. Empty: below 1/24 of the total, that is less than half of an even month. Shoulder: all the others. No official source defines peak or shoulder months: these thresholds are the Play the Event convention.
  • No moving average and no forecast: the tool describes the year you entered, it does not tell you what will happen.

How it works

Choose one of the 107 Italian provinces and a year, from 2016 to the latest released by ISTAT, the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The page shows nights spent month by month, the share of the two peak months, the Gini coefficient, the share of nights by guests from abroad and the comparison with the European Union average.

The data come from the public ISTAT file of dataflow 122_54_DF_DCSC_TUR_3, extracted on the date shown on the page. A month that ISTAT does not release appears as «data not released by the source», never as zero.

Frequently asked questions

Why can I not see the change in the total between 2024 and 2025?

Because from 2025 ISTAT also counts rental accommodation run on a non-business basis: the total and non-hotel accommodation are not comparable with earlier years. The page shows the change only for the hotel series, which has no such break.

Why are the months of 2026 missing?

Monthly data by province are released many months later: on the extraction date shown on the page, ISTAT had not yet released any month of 2026 for the provinces. The page only shows the years the source has published.

Does it work for other countries?

For now only for Italy, with ISTAT data. The data model accepts other national series with the same format (area, month, guests' country of residence). To measure the seasonality of your own numbers, in any country, use the «Seasonality of your data» tool.

Limits of the calculation

  • Nights only count stays in registered tourist accommodation: they do not count people staying with friends or in second homes, nor day visitors.
  • From 2025 the total also includes rental accommodation run on a non-business basis: comparisons with earlier years are only valid for hotels.
  • Monthly data by province are released many months later: the current year is not there yet.
  • Italy only: other countries need the series of their own statistical institutes.

Sources

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