A tourism wave of momentum through several regions has created an unforeseen list of winners of the 2025 award: Saudi Arabia, Greece, India, Spain, and Macao.
Every market—the combination of post-pandemic demand, mega events, policy changes, and heavy investment—experienced significant hotel and visitation growth this year, compelling hoteliers and travel platforms to reconsider their pricing, distribution, and guest experience strategies.
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The heart of this change lies in a greater industry reset: customers are making different booking choices, destinations are opening up to new source markets, and operators are increasingly relying on digital channels and dynamic yield strategies.
The outcome is not one aberration but a trend of record-breaking performance in different geographies.
Saudi Arabia: local booming and increased occupancy.
The hospitality industry in Saudi Arabia has experienced a significant domestic driving force in 2025, with the industry reporting that it has notable domestic travel and a steep increase in hotel occupancy rates during peak seasons.
➡️ Related: Saudi Arabia Travel Guide
Analysts explain the boom by the combination of increased entertainment content, liberalized visa policies in many of the source countries, and intense domestic tourism promotional efforts that have prompted Saudis to move within the kingdom.
These trends have resulted in room nights and revenue growth of domestic hotels that can be measured on an annual basis.
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Greece: all-time high revenues on islands and mainland.
The accommodation industry in Greece has registered a high rate of revenue growth in 2025 due to the positive summer period in the islands and the stability in demand in urban destinations.
Reported in the industry are the growth in hotel revenues and direct bookings in major regions—data that indicates both high occupancy and healthier per-room revenues than in recent years.
The Greek performance, particularly in the Aegean islands and the resort belts, has been remarkable in terms of recovery speed and extent of direct-booking rebounds.
Macao: the number of visitors returned to almost the pre-pandemic level.
The recovery of tourism in Macao has been a crazy one: the city registered multi-million visitor months in 2025 as the travel outflows of mainland China and other regional markets began to stamp their feet in the city.
Government statistics published this fall demonstrate that the number of visitors arriving at the country is increasing drastically, and the indicators of occupancy and package-tour volumes are above many of the regional standards.
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The recovery of Macao highlights the importance of the markets that are more interconnected with large domestic or regional source markets to recover faster when the travel limits are relaxed.
Spain: hotel groups are boosted by resorts and city demand.
Spain, which has long been among the world tourism giants, has remained at the top of booking records in 2025, and large hotel corporations are announcing expected summer and autumn performance that is stronger than expected.
Resort destinations were still in demand, and big chains were taking more revenues per available room—partly because international visitors came back with great spending power and longer stays.
➡️ Related Europe travel guide:
Italy Budget Travel Guide 2025
Simultaneously, the picture of the supply of short-term rentals and hotels in some areas is being influenced by policy shifts and local VAT discussions.
India: construction market, increasing pipeline, and domestic market.
The hospitality narrative of India in the year 2025 is two-fold: a boom in construction and development of hotels and resorts, and the intensification of domestic leisure and business travel.
In early 2025, industry tracker notes that India recorded the highest number of countries in Asia-Pacific in regard to hotel projects being developed by operators and investors, and this is an indication that operators and investors are confident that demand is growing, particularly in the tier-one and tier-two cities where domestic travel is growing at a high rate.
This pipeline implies the short-term occupancy growth and long-term capacity growth.
What is rewriting the travel playbook? — Four lessons to hoteliers and platforms.
The demand is local and more high-end. Revenue mixes are shifting as domestic travel surges (Saudi Arabia, India) and more spending by returning international travelers (Spain, Greece) alter revenue mixes—hoteliers have to balance the occupancy strategy with the ADR strategy.
Direct reservations are popular again. Places that had invested in direct-booking systems and reward schemes (especially Greece) have experienced disproportionate growth in revenue per booking.
It is required to have data and a dynamic yield. In cases of high traffic arrivals, real-time pricing engines and channel management avoid lost revenue and distribution mayhem—those operators that fall behind miss out on money on the table.
Policy and events matter. National liberalizations in visas, major events, and domestic controls (e.g., short-term rental tax dispute in Spain) still influence the demand flows and where operators ought to invest.
Response by industry and future expectations.
Hotels have also reacted swiftly: hotel chains are hastening renovation and soft-branding initiatives, online travel agencies are modifying commission and promotion blends, and regional destination management organizations are shifting to quality, not quantity- longer stays, low-season getaways.
It is likely to be volatile in 2026 as the capacity added currently will start to appear; however, it is quite evident that the demand fundamentals are healthier than many expected at the beginning of this year.
Key markets will be monitoring the impact of the macro factors of fuel prices, the capacity, and the geopolitical stability of the airlines on travel flows.
In the meantime, destinations whose policy is intelligent, whose source markets and investment in experience are diversified (not taking only room supply) will probably be able to maintain the gains.
Conclusion
The current boom of the Saudi Arabia tourism market in Greece, India, Spain, and Macao is not a sequence of victories, but it is an indicator of the fact that post-pandemic travel trends have entered a new balance as the domestic market, specific policy, and online distribution are aligned to generate record results.
To hoteliers and travel platforms, the takeaway is practical: change pricing, invest more in data, and consider emerging source markets as strategic resources—not noise.
