Special effects from film tourism. After the release of the film “The Devil Wears Prada 2” the average daily pedestrian flows of foreign tourists in the main Milanese locations of the film increased by 18% compared to the previous period. This is revealed by an analysis from the Confcommercio Milano Lodi Monza Brianza study center (carried out through the Cities Analytics platform). The increase, writes Confcommercio, affected all the analyzed areas: for Cairoli-Palazzo Clerici the most marked growth (+28%), followed by Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II-Duomo (+17%), Brera (+14%) and Montenapoleone (+13%).
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Milan from desert to overtourism
From May 1 to July 26, foreign visitors in the analyzed areas came on average 52.3% from EU countries and 47.7% from non-EU countries. Among the main countries of origin are the United States, the top foreign market in all monitored locations, with a share between 13% and 20% of visitors. Followed by France (11.6%-13.8%) and the United Kingdom (8.5%-10.6%), while among other European markets Austria, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland stand out, demonstrating Milan’s strong attractiveness.
“The elaborations of our study center – notes Marco Barbieri, general secretary of Confcommercio Lodi Monza Brianza – confirm a structural growth trend of international tourism in the center of Milan.” Foreign visitors increase on average by 28,500 units per month.
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Based on this trend, for the summer quarter (July, August, September) about 1.5 million foreign arrivals in Milan are expected in total, over 451 thousand in this month of August. A month which, a few years ago, was characterized by urban desertification due to holidays.
Positive expectations for August
August is therefore growing for Italian tourism in general. Over 96.7 million overnight stays are expected with a growth of 1.1% compared to the same month of 2025 according to estimates by Assoturismo, developed by the Florence Tourism Study Center for Confesercenti on a panel of over a thousand Italian hospitality entrepreneurs. 53.8% of the presences will be Italian tourists, for an estimated volume of about 52 million overnight stays (+1%), while the foreign component will account for 46.2% of the total, with 44.7 million presences and a forecast growth of 1.3%. The trend of the peak month of the season remains overall positive, although it is set in a summer marked by rising fuel and transport prices: to cope with this, operators expect shorter stays, a stronger preference for short and medium-range destinations, and a contraction of spending in holiday locations. The market is still fragmented, with differentiated trends by geographic area and product type. The intense heat and weather stability continue to favor the sea, lakes and mountains, with positive prospects at least until the week of Ferragosto. Art cities instead record a slowdown in demand, especially Italian, penalized by high temperatures: the expected growth stops at +0.3%, for a total of 13.6 million presences, while remaining the main attraction for foreign tourists arriving in Italy.
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