The European Cyclists’ Federation has launched a new report on the economic impact of cycling tourism.
Unveiled at the EuroVelo & Cycling Tourism 2026 Conference currently ongoing in Utrecht, the major takeaway is not a single economic value or headline continental growth trend.
The takeaway is that Europe is severely lagging in tracking and measuring cycling tourism across the continent.
The European Parliament’s latest official data on the topic estimated 2.3 billion cycle tourism trips per year in the EU, economically valued at around €44 billion. That study is from 2012.
“You will have heard about these figures and that’s because they’re so important and so central for our advocacy work on growing cycling tourism,” Holger Haubold, Director of Intellectual Property and Data Collection at the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) and co-author of the report, said at the conference which Zag attends in Utrecht.
“But really there’s one big problem here – they’re really, really getting old.”
Europe has a cycling tourism data problem
The ECF report compiles more recent data on cycling tourism from four European countries: France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
In doing so, it aims to highlight the growing importance of cycling tourism across Europe to encourage EU bodies to back consolidated, up-to-date data that accurately captures cycling tourism behaviours and trends across the continent.
The ECF’s report is a combination of findings from national studies across the four tracked countries over different years. That, in itself, highlights the issue at hand: a lack of harmonised methodology that undermines the accuracy of continental growth trends or cross-border comparisons.
“For the total economic impact, there are very different definitions and methodologies behind these figures. Sometimes it’s about cycling tourism. Sometimes it’s cycling day trips with one or two hours of cycling. We need more harmonisation here,” explained Haubold.
“What these figures do tell us,” he continued, “is that cycling tourism is an important economic sector that accounts for a significant share of tourism in these four countries.”
What the numbers tell us
What the data does show is that there is a real appetite for cycling tourism across Europe.
In Germany, the gross revenue from cycling tourists and day excursions was valued at €18 billion in 2024. In Italy, the economic impact of cycling tourism was measured at €6.4 billion in 2025, marking a 39% increase since 2019.
France’s economic value of cycling tourism came in at €4.2 billion in 2019 – a 121% increase from 2009. And in the Netherlands, the total expenditure of Dutch cycling tourists in 2025 was €1.3 billion, while €2.1 billion came from cycling day trips.
As Haubold emphasised, different measurements and definitions have been used across these national studies to come to economic valuations, meaning the findings cannot be directly placed against each other in a country comparison.
In the Netherlands, 70% of its population were found to take recreational cycling trips in 2026. Nearly 19% of the Italian population will cycle during their holidays, also according to 2026 data. Half of the German population cycle during their holidays or in their free time as of 2025 and 40% of the French population usually cycle during their holidays, a 2018 study found.
Italy’s data finds that the average daily spend per cycling tourist is €91 for goods and services and €69 for accommodation. The Netherlands measured the average daily spending per person at €77 on a cycle touring holiday or €53 on a centre-based holiday. In Germany, the daily spend figure exceeded €105 and France measured the average daily spend at €64. The years these findings were produced vary.
In France, 4% of all vacations were found to be cycling vacations and 6% of all overnight vacations were cycling-related. More than 90% of these vacations were spent in France.
Meanwhile, 14% of cycling tourists are foreign visitors along seven touristic cycle routes in France, according to 2021-2023 data. The economic impact of the EuroVelo 6 route alone is valued at €54.5 million per year, with threefold growth between 2010 and 2022.
Bicycle train ticket sales help demonstrate a growth in cycling tourism in France. The Intercités train network which operates domestically recorded a 179% growth in bicycle train ticket sales between 2020 and 2025. The TVG INOUI, which operates throughout France as well as neighbouring European countries, saw these sales rise 164% over the same period.
Whilst these sales could relate to other journey purposes like commuting, Haubold said they are “probably predominantly” linked to tourism and cycling leisure.
“It helps to confirm the findings from the economic studies,” he said.
There’s still potential to be unlocked. In Germany, half of non-cycling tourists said they could imagine going on a cycling holiday in the future. The research also explores a less-pronounced gender gap in cycle tourism as well as the role that e-bikes have to play in driving the trend.
It’s a study packed with evidence that cycling tourism is already a significant part of Europe’s tourism economy. But the fundamental gap remains: Europe still does not have the consistent, up-to-date data needed to understand the sector at a continental level. If policymakers and destinations want to capture more of cycling tourism’s economic potential, the first step is knowing its true scale.
For the ECF, that means moving beyond fragmented national studies towards a standardised approach that can properly track how cycling tourism is evolving across Europe.
