Poland’s hotel sector is growing faster than anywhere else in the EU. The EU average is more than twice as high as Poland’s figure. At the same time, however, the pace at which the country’s hotel industry is expanding is impressive. Over the past decade, Poland’s hotel accommodation base has grown faster than that of any other EU member state. What is more, this growth appears more than justified, as demand for hotel stays is increasing even faster than new hotels are being built.
The domestic hotel sector grew by almost half over the past decade, according to Eurostat data. The latest figures for 2025 show that the number of “beds” in hotel establishments has already risen to 430,000.
Particularly in countries such as Poland, where domestic travellers still account for the vast majority of hotel guests, it is useful to look not only at the absolute number of hotel beds, but also at the number of beds per 1,000 inhabitants. This measure provides a better picture of the relative size of the hotel sector and allows for meaningful international comparisons. By this measure, Poland’s hotel accommodation base has grown by almost half over the past decade.
In absolute terms, the figures show that between 2015 and 2025, the number of beds in Polish hotel establishments increased from 301,600 to 430,100, representing a 43% increase. As Poland’s population declined over the same period, the increase per 1,000 inhabitants was even stronger, at approximately 49%.
Poland Is a Country of Hotel Market Extremes
These figures are already impressive, but the picture becomes even more interesting when Poland’s statistics are compared with those of other European countries. Such comparisons place Poland at opposite ends of the scale. On the one hand, Poland has the lowest hotel accommodation density in the EU; on the other, this indicator has grown faster in Poland than anywhere else in the EU.
Poland Is Growing Faster Than Any Other EU Market
Between 2015 and 2025, the number of hotel beds per 1,000 inhabitants in Poland increased from just under 8 to almost 12. No other EU country recorded such rapid growth over this period. Poland’s growth rate exceeded the EU average of 9% by more than five times. In countries such as Germany, France and Spain, growth was even slower, while in the extreme cases of Cyprus, Switzerland and Austria, population growth outpaced the increase in hotel accommodation.
Romania came closest to Poland’s result, with the number of hotel beds per 1,000 inhabitants increasing by as much as 45% over the decade. Beyond Romania, rapid growth in the sector was seen primarily in smaller countries. In Slovenia and Denmark, for example, the indicator increased by more than one-third. Latvia, Liechtenstein, Bulgaria and Lithuania followed, all of which have significantly smaller populations than Poland.
A Relatively Modest Hotel Supply
Compared with the rest of the EU, Poland had no equal over the past decade when it came to the pace of development of its modern hotel accommodation base. There are two main reasons for this: Poland had – and still has – significant ground to make up, while average hotel occupancy continues to increase despite the opening of new properties. In other words, although many new hotels have been built in Poland, the number of people willing to use them has grown even faster. This is partly due to rising incomes among Poles, as well as the growing popularity of Poland among international tourists.
This can first be explained by the economic concept known as the low-base effect. Despite the nearly 50% increase in the number of hotel beds, Poland still ranks at the very bottom of the EU in terms of accommodation density. Simply put, fewer than 12 hotel beds per 1,000 inhabitants is low by European standards. The EU average is approximately 2.5 times higher, at more than 29 beds per 1,000 inhabitants. In Germany, hotel establishments could accommodate twice as large a share of the population as in Poland, while in the Czech Republic there are enough hotel beds for as many as 33 people out of every 1,000. Even Lithuania and Latvia have relatively more hotel accommodation capacity than Poland.
The contrast becomes even more striking when Poland is compared with southern European countries, where the number ranges from around 40 hotel beds per 1,000 inhabitants in Italy and Spain to more than 80 beds per 1,000 inhabitants in Greece, Cyprus and Malta. The particularly high ratios in these countries largely reflect the enormous scale of international tourism combined with relatively small populations in some of these markets. In Poland, international tourists still account for almost one in four hotel guests, although this share has been steadily increasing in recent years.
More Hotels, but Vacant Rooms Are Becoming Harder to Find
The scale of investment in modern hotel accommodation in Poland is also supported by hard data on the utilisation of the existing hotel base. According to Statistics Poland (GUS), hotel room occupancy reached 54.7% in 2025. By comparison, the figure was 48.3% a decade earlier and 43.1% in 2005. This shows that despite the impressive expansion of Poland’s hotel base, average occupancy has increased rather than declined over the longer term. In other words, the number of hotel rooms is growing more slowly than the number of guests.
What is more, this imbalance is most visible in the highest-end hotel segment. Four- and five-star hotels recorded even higher room occupancy rates than the overall hotel market. In five-star hotels, GUS estimated room occupancy at as much as 63.4% in 2025. This is a very strong result, although not a record. Five-star properties recorded higher occupancy rates in the pre-pandemic years of 2013–2019.
Four-star hotels, on the other hand, returned to record occupancy levels. According to GUS, these properties ended 2025 with an average room occupancy rate of 59.9%. This represents a significant improvement not only compared with the previous year, five years earlier or ten years earlier, but also marks a level previously reached only once in this segment – in 2019.
The Development of Poland’s Modern Hotel Base Was Financed by Domestic Investors
Such rapid development of the hotel accommodation base naturally raises the question of where the capital behind this growth came from. It turns out that the funding did not come exclusively from banks, investment funds or large hotel companies. Individual investors purchasing individual rooms and apartments in condo- and aparthotel schemes played a particularly important role, especially in tourist destinations.
The scale of this phenomenon is clearly illustrated by successive reports from Emmerson Evaluation. According to these reports, between 2019 and 2025, the number of operating condo units and investment apartments increased from 28,600 to 45,900 – an increase of 17,300 units. This represents growth of more than 60% in just six years. The majority of this increase – 77% – took place in tourist destinations. Over the same period, the stock of condo units and investment apartments monitored by Emmerson in the largest metropolitan areas increased by a relatively modest 3,900 units.
To put the scale of this change into perspective, these figures can be compared with the development of the hotel market as a whole.
Between 2019 and 2025, the number of rooms in Polish hotels increased from approximately 141,400 to 160,800. This means an additional 19,400 rooms. That is only slightly more than the increase in the stock of condo units and investment apartments recorded over the same period (17,300 units according to Emmerson). In numerical terms, the growth of this segment was therefore equivalent to almost 90% of the net increase in the number of hotel rooms reported by GUS.
This does not, of course, mean that individual investors were responsible for 90% of the development of Poland’s hotel accommodation base. The two sets of statistics overlap only partially. The point is that some rooms in condohotels are also included in the official hotel statistics maintained by GUS. The situation is different with investment apartments, a significant proportion of which remain outside the statistical framework used by the authority for hotels. Moreover, the number of hotel rooms reflects a net change and therefore also takes into account properties that have been withdrawn from operation. For these reasons, the figures cannot be directly compared.
Rapid growth does not mean, however, that the condo segment is now a problem-free market. Emmerson points to increasingly selective buyers, signs of saturation in some resorts and financial difficulties affecting certain projects.
Nevertheless, the data clearly demonstrate the scale of the transformation that has taken place in recent years. It would be difficult to imagine such rapid development of Poland’s hotel accommodation base – and particularly the qualitative transformation of its seaside and mountain resorts – without billions of złoty invested by thousands of individual investors. There are, however, no data that would allow us to state directly that individual investors financed, for example, more than half of all new hotels built in Poland in recent years. Such a conclusion would be fully justified in the case of tourist destinations, but not necessarily in the country’s largest cities, where traditional forms of financing play a much greater role.
5S Invest Research Team
5s.com.pl
