Hike to the Col de la Tortue, scrubland, landscape, nature, Mediterranean vegetation, shrubs, holm oaks, terrain, panoramic view, unobstructed view, horizon, blue sky, sunny, natural light, outdoors, horizontal, sea
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Research & Observatory
Customer research
You can find all the customer surveys conducted in 2024 here.
Tourism statistics
The business survey, which provides a monthly overview, is carried out during the summer months amongst 220 tourism professionals in the Thau archipelago, as part of a regional initiative in partnership with Hérault Tourisme, with the aim of identifying trends in tourism activity in real time, as reliably and consistently as possible.
The region’s capacity
This section is currently being updated and refined as more data becomes available
Observatoi Accommodation 2023
Commercial tourist beds by type
Commercial tourist beds by municipality
Typo 2023 Breakdown
Municipal Breakdown
Tourist numbers
The tourist visitor data shown below is sourced from the FLUX VISION TOURISME solution operated by ORANGE BUSINESS, in partnership with Hérault Tourisme.
This solution converts technical data from the Orange mobile network into statistical indicators, thereby enabling the analysis of visitor numbers in a given area.
It provides information on the number of ‘tourist’ and ‘day-tripper’ visitors, as well as their geographical origin—both within France (regions/departments of origin) and abroad (countries of origin).
Definitions:
A touriststays for at least one night
A day-tripper spends more than 2 hours at the destination without staying overnight
Tourist overnight stays:
In 2025, our destination attracted nearly 10 million French and foreign tourists (-0.9% compared to 2024).
The number of French tourists remained virtually stable, with a slight decrease of 1.7% compared to 2024, whilst foreign tourists saw a slight increase of 1%.
French overnight stays account for 70.5%, compared with 29.5% for foreign overnight stays.
The majority of stays (54.7%) take place during school holidays, particularly during the summer.
Geographical origins of French tourists who visited the Thau Archipelago in 2025:
The top three regions remain unchanged from 2025, although there has been a slight decline in visitor numbers from these source regions.
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes remains the leading source region with 26.1% of tourist overnight stays, followed by the Île-de-France and Occitanie regions, whose figures are very close (16% and 14.9%).
Note: Visitor numbers from within the department (residents of the Hérault department, excluding the municipalities of the Thau Archipelago).
These tourists account for just over 900,000 visitors and tend to visit our destination outside of school holidays.
Geographical origins of foreign tourists who stayed in the Thau Archipelago in 2025:
Germans by far represent the largest group of foreign tourists (27.5%) staying in the Thau Archipelago.
French Chart
Trends in Overnight Stays by Tourists Worldwide
Day-trippers:
The number of day trippers visiting the Thau Archipelago in 2025 is 8 million.
These day-trippers are predominantly French, accounting for nearly 68% (-4.3%), whilst 32% (-4%) are foreign visitors.
Their presence in the Thau Archipelago is almost identical whether during school holidays (5.7%) or outside school holidays (49.3%).
The summer period remains the most popular time for these day-trippers (58%).
Geographical origins of French day trippers in 2025:
French day trippers come mainly from the Occitanie region (4 departments / top 6).
Geographical origins of foreign day-trippers in 2025:
As with tourists, German day-trippers account for the largest number of our day visitors, even though their numbers are down this year (-20.8%), followed by Spanish day-trippers, whose numbers are up by 6.3%.
Origin: French Day Trippers
Foreign day trippers
Economic benefits
The tourism sector generated €1.4 billion in economic benefits in 2024 (it accounted for 19% of direct and indirect employment in the Sète Agglopôle Méditerranée area in 2019):
- €600 million generated by tourists
- €840 million generated by day-trippers
A tourist staying overnight spends an average of €63 per day, whilst a day-tripper spends €65. This figure is €52 for a spa guest.
Average Expenditure 1
