Rome Is the New Luxury Travel Hub
The Eternal City is experiencing a surge in high-end hotels and travel experiences.
The year 2025 is a big one for Rome as the Catholic Jubilee is expected to bring millions to the city. Even so, the capital city of Italy has been booming for the last few years. “There is a fantastic momentum in Rome,” the city’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, said at the inaugural RISE – Rome Insights Style Experience, a benchmark event of the luxury travel industry. “The city has climbed the tourist charts as a destination of excellence,” he boasted, underlining the record number of tourists, sold-out concerts (think Coldplay), major-sporting events (Ryder Cup), and “the growth of international investments at levels not seen for years.”
The resurgence of the luxury hotel industry since the pandemic is not a temporary trend but a structural shift. Luxury Travel Intelligence, an independent platform specializing in the analysis and evaluation of the high-end tourism sector, ranked Rome second in the world in 2024 for new openings of ultraluxury hotels, surpassed only by London and ahead of metropolises such as New York, Sydney, Singapore, and Tokyo. In 2024, Rome saw the opening of 14 new five-star hotels, including Six Senses, Bulgari, Anantara Palazzo Naiadi, and Edition, with another seven soon to open, including Nobu, Four Seasons, and Orient Express La Minerva.
“This reset is a fantastic opportunity,” Gualtieri said, “a transformation of tourism in Rome into a real industry.” Historically, Rome has failed to attract international hotel brands partly because of the lack of real estate. The number of defunct bank buildings and public administrative offices makes for empty palazzi that are ideal real estate opportunities for a modern reinterpretation. The intent, Gualtieri stated, is “an economy of new activity, creating skilled jobs, increasing the income of the local operator, and leading to improvements in neighbourhoods.” (Investment volume in 2023 reached €412 million.) This new wave of luxury hotels also presents an opportunity to incorporate retail spaces on the ground floor, offering brand expansion alongside hospitality ventures.
Overtourism is a challenge for the future of tourism—the Roma & Lazio Convention Bureau reported 51.4 million overnight stays in 2024—and Rome continues to top most people’s bucket list. The reason, of course, is that it is one of the most awe-inspiring cities in existence, but there is so much to admire beyond the obvious. Unlike Venice, which continues to have a mass exodus of locals, Rome is a city where residents actually thrive, and so when in Rome, do as the Romans do—live how they live. This new luxury offering provides a range of perspectives on the Eternal City.
