Paris proper has 87,546 hotel rooms spread across 1,629 hotels as of 1 January 2026, roughly as many as the heart of London. On paper, Greater London lines up twice as many, 174,384, but over an area fifteen times larger and counting B&Bs, aparthotels and hostels. La Revue des Hôtels has gathered the official figures for seven major European cities, with their boundaries and dates.
- 🗼 Paris · 87,546 hotel rooms in 1,629 hotels within the city limits on 1 January 2026 (INSEE).
- 🎡 London · 174,384 rooms for Greater London, a very wide boundary; 85,286 in the Central Activities Zone (CAZ), roughly level with Paris.
- 📊 The chasing pack · Amsterdam 42,622, Vienna 42,426, Barcelona 40,014, Madrid 39,336, Lisbon 25,427 rooms.
- 👥 Per resident · Amsterdam 46, Lisbon 44, Paris 42 rooms per 1,000 residents: a trio too close to separate.
- ⭐ Luxury · 9,505 five-star rooms in Paris, against 6,727 in Barcelona and 4,558 in Vienna.
- ⚠️ Worth knowing · Boundaries and dates differ (from Q1 2025 to April 2026); Berlin, Rome and Milan are left out of the ranking.
The full ranking, with the exact figures and the date of each count:
| Rank | City | Hotel rooms | Hotels | Per 1,000 residents | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | London (Greater London) | 174,384 | not published | 19.1 | Q1 2025 |
| 2 | Paris (city proper) | 87,546 | 1,629 | 41.6 | 1 Jan 2026 |
| 3 | Amsterdam | 42,622 | 517 | 45.6 | 2025 |
| 4 | Vienna | 42,426 | 450 | 20.8 | 31 May 2025 |
| 5 | Barcelona | 40,014 | 444 | 23.1 | April 2026 |
| 6 | Madrid | 39,336 | 306 | 11.2 | 2025 |
| 7 | Lisbon | 25,427 | 303 (2024) | 44.2 | 2025 |
| London, Central Activities Zone (CAZ) | 85,286 | not published | Q1 2025 |
Contents
London leads, thanks to an XXL boundary
With 174,384 rooms in the first quarter of 2025, London comes out far ahead. But this figure, published in July 2026 by GLA Economics, the research unit of the Greater London Authority, using the CoStar inventory, covers the whole of Greater London: 1,572 km² and 9.1 million residents, against 105 km² and 2.1 million for Paris proper. It also counts B&Bs, guest houses, aparthotels and hostels.
Centre against centre, the gap disappears: London’s Central Activities Zone (CAZ) has 85,286 rooms, roughly as many as Paris. Conversely, apply London’s boundary to Paris, adding serviced residences and hostels, and the French capital rises to 95,825 units. London has also gained 14,269 rooms since the first quarter of 2019 (160,115).
Paris: half of all rooms are 4 or 5 stars
The INSEE breakdown sketches the Parisian profile. Four-star hotels dominate with 35,820 rooms in 546 hotels, ahead of three-star properties (31,270 rooms, 689 hotels). The five-star category, home to the palaces, brings together 9,505 rooms in 117 hotels, or 10.9% of the stock. Together, four- and five-star hotels total 45,325 rooms, 51.8% of the whole.
Compared with the two cities that also publish this breakdown, Paris lines up the most five-star rooms: 6,727 in Barcelona (including 3,344 “gran lujo”) and 4,558 in Vienna. Yet the share of upscale rooms is higher elsewhere: four and five stars account for 69.4% of rooms in Barcelona and 60.1% in Vienna. And Parisian five-stars are more intimate: 81 rooms on average, against 182 in Vienna.
| Category | Paris rooms | Paris hotels | Vienna rooms | Vienna hotels | Barcelona rooms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 stars | 9,505 | 117 | 4,558 | 25 | 6,727 (incl. 3,344 gran lujo) |
| 4 stars | 35,820 | 546 | 20,926 | 189 | 21,037 (incl. 4,488 superior) |
| 3 stars | 31,270 | 689 | 13,075 | 167 | 7,709 |
| 2 stars | 6,126 | 136 | 3,867 (1 and 2 stars) | 69 (1 and 2 stars) | 2,680 |
| 1 star | 1,976 | 47 | included in 2 stars | included in 2 stars | 1,861 |
| Unclassified | 2,849 | 94 | not published | not published | not published |
| Total | 87,546 | 1,629 | 42,426 | 450 | 40,014 |
Four cities within 3,300 rooms of each other
Behind Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid sit within 3,300 rooms of one another. Their order depends on definitions: Amsterdam also counts guesthouses, hostels and B&Bs with at least five beds, and rises to 45,296 rooms in January 2026, a provisional figure. Madrid would climb to around 48,000 rooms if the hostales counted by Spain’s INE were added.
Vienna includes its pensions and rooms closed for renovation: 41,920 rooms were actually open in January 2026. Barcelona publishes a provisional monthly census (April 2026) and reaches 43,724 rooms across the Barcelonès, its five municipalities. Lisbon brings up the rear with 25,427 rooms, hotels only, for 303 hotels counted in 2024.
Per resident, a podium too tight to call
Measured against population, the ranking flips: Amsterdam has 45.6 rooms per 1,000 residents, Lisbon 44.2 and Paris 41.6. Next come Barcelona (23.1), Vienna (20.8), London (19.1) and Madrid (11.2), whose figure excludes hostales.
But this podium cannot be read as a clear-cut ranking. The top three cities are separated by just a few rooms, less than the gaps in definition: Amsterdam counts B&Bs and hostels that Paris excludes, and Lisbon’s population comes from an older series by Portugal’s INE, revised upwards by 12% in 2026 for Greater Lisbon. The Lisbon ratio is therefore probably overstated. The only solid finding: Paris, Amsterdam and Lisbon offer nearly twice as many rooms per resident as Barcelona, Vienna or London.
Our method: sources, boundaries, dates
We used only official hotel room figures: statistics institutes, cities and tourist boards, with no beds, no Airbnb-style rentals and no estimates whatsoever. The ratio divides rooms by the city’s official population, then multiplies by 1,000. The target boundary is the municipality; London, published for Greater London, is the exception.
The dates run from Q1 2025 to April 2026, and each city counts slightly differently. The table sums up what each figure covers.
| City | Boundary | What is counted | Date | Comparable with Paris |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | Greater London, 1,572 km² | Hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, aparthotels, hostels | Q1 2025 | Low |
| Paris | Municipality, 105 km² | Hotels, classified or not | 1 Jan 2026 | Benchmark |
| Amsterdam | Municipality | Hotels, guesthouses, B&Bs, hostels (5 beds or more) | 2025, final | Medium |
| Vienna | City (state of Vienna) | Hotels and pensions, including those closed for renovation | 31 May 2025 | Good |
| Barcelona | Municipality | Open hotels and apartment hotels | April 2026, provisional | Good |
| Madrid | Municipality | Hotel establishments, exact definition not verified | 2025 | Medium |
| Lisbon | Municipality | Hotels only | 2025 (hotels: 2024) | Medium |
Berlin, Rome, Milan: why they are missing
Berlin publishes only beds: 119,085 in 522 accommodation establishments (hotels, guesthouses, Gasthöfe) in December 2025, according to the Berlin-Brandenburg statistics office. The number of rooms is collected but not released. As a rough guide, that makes 32.2 beds per 1,000 residents, against 41.4 in Vienna: beds cannot be compared with rooms.
Rome has 994 hotels rated from 1 to 5 stars in 2024, 55 of them five-star, according to the Roma Capitale statistical yearbook. But the number of rooms by municipality appears only in the Istat database, which was unreachable on 24 and 25 October 2026. For Milan, no official room figure was available: the city’s dataset covers beds only.
What it means for your stay
In Paris, the choice is dense within the city limits: 87,546 rooms over 105 km², more than half of them four- or five-star. Five-star hotels nonetheless remain a niche, barely more than one room in ten: for the most sought-after dates, book early, and our ranking of the best hotels in Paris will help you choose.
In London, look at the centre rather than the total: the central zone holds 85,286 rooms, roughly as many as Paris. Elsewhere, think in orders of magnitude rather than rank: Amsterdam, Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid offer a similar stock, around 40,000 rooms. To see where travellers actually sleep, see also our ranking of hotel nights in Europe in 2025.
Sources (accessed 25 October 2026)
- Paris: INSEE, tourist accommodation capacity by municipality, 2026; population: INSEE, reference populations 2023
- London: GLA Economics, Visitor Accommodation in London, July 2026 (CoStar data); population: ONS, mid-2025 estimates
- Amsterdam: CBS, StatLine 84040NED; population: CBS, 37230ned
- Vienna: WienTourismus, Hotelangebot & -auslastung 2026 (MA 23 data); population: Statistik Austria
- Barcelona: Turisme de Barcelona, Informe d’oferta hotelera, April 2026; population: INE, Padrón municipal
- Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid, note on tourism in 2025; hostales: INE, hotel occupancy survey; population: INE, Padrón municipal
- Lisbon: INE Portugal, indicator 0013365; hotels and population: INE Portugal, Lisboa municipal profile 2025
- Berlin: Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, G IV 1, December 2025
- Rome: Roma Capitale, Annuario statistico 2024, tourism; Milan: Comune di Milano, open data ds2955
