ISTAT: the monthly guest movement report in Italy

Of all the duties an Italian property has, the ISTAT survey is the easiest to forget: no guest asks for it, there is no payment attached, and for months nothing seems to happen. It is mandatory all the same, every month, including months when the property stayed closed. Here is exactly what to report, when and where — and why it has nothing to do with the two other reports you already file.

What the guest movement survey is

It is the statistical survey through which Italy measures tourism: how many people arrive, where they come from, and how many nights they stay. It is not about checking up on you, it is about counting flows — and it is the data Regions and municipalities use to plan investment and promotion. Responding is mandatory: the survey is part of the national statistical programme, the duty comes from article 7 of legislative decree 322/1989, and it sits inside the European regulation on tourism statistics. It applies to every property — hotels, guest houses and short-term rentals — with no size threshold.

It is not Alloggiati Web, and not the tourist tax

These are three different reports, with different recipients and deadlines. Mixing them up is why some owners believe they have already filed it:

• Alloggiati Web → to the Police, for security: each guest’s ID details, within the hours set after arrival.
• Tourist tax → to the municipality, for revenue: amounts collected from guests, to be paid and declared under the local rules.
• ISTAT → to the Region (which then passes it to ISTAT), for statistics: aggregate monthly numbers, with no names and no documents.

None of the three replaces the others, even though they all start from the same guests.

What you report

The figures are aggregate, never nominal. Typically you need:

• Arrivals: how many people started their stay during the month.
• Nights: total nights sold in the month (a couple for three nights = six nights).
• Departures: how many people ended their stay during the month.
• Origin: Italians by region of residence, foreign guests by country of residence.
• Capacity and closures: rooms and beds available, and the days the property was closed.

One detail is regularly missed: what counts is the guest’s residence, not their citizenship or place of birth. An Italian citizen living in Berlin is, statistically, an arrival from Germany.

By when, and on which portal

There is no single answer valid for the whole country, and that is the key thing to know: both the deadline and the portal depend on your Region. The most common rule is filing by the 5th of the following month — June nights by 5 July — because the Region then has to hand the data to ISTAT by mid-month. The portals vary accordingly: ROSS1000 in several regions, Turismo5, WebTur, Sinfonia and other regional systems. Two practical warnings:

• Empty months still get filed: closed property or zero guests must be reported as zero movement, not skipped.
• Portal credentials come from the Region or the provincial tourism office: if you never received them, the duty does not disappear — you have to ask for them.

Before you set your internal routine, check the instructions published by your own Region: they are the only source that applies to your property.

What skipping it costs

Because this is a statistical survey with a mandatory response, failing to file can be sanctioned administratively under legislative decree 322/1989, and several Regions add penalties of their own for non-compliant properties. In practice reminders from the regional office come before any fine — but the missing months still have to be filed, and reconstructing arrivals and nights from six months ago is work out of all proportion to the five minutes it takes each month.

How HotelOnlineAI prepares it

The system builds the monthly summary from stays already recorded — arrivals, departures and nights, with Italians split by region and foreign guests by country — and exports it as a file ready to upload. It also flags bookings with incomplete data, so you fix them before filing instead of hearing it from the portal. One honest note: filing on the regional portal stays with you. We prepare the numbers, we do not submit anything on your behalf.

In short

The ISTAT survey costs very little time when guest data is clean from check-in onwards, and only becomes a problem once it piles up. Fix three things: your Region’s deadline in the calendar, who files it when that person is away, and the habit of reporting zero months too. The rest is one file to upload.