According to the latest CEROM report (Rapid Economic Accounts for Overseas France), Réunion Island's hotel sector delivered a mixed performance in 2025: while overall occupancy rose 5%, it is the premium segment — 4 and 5-star establishments — that led the charge, with a remarkable +14% growth.
A Premium Segment Driving the Recovery
The momentum is particularly pronounced in the West of the island, where occupancy across all categories rose 8% — the zone that hosts the island's largest hotel complexes. French visitors remain overwhelmingly dominant, accounting for 92% of all recorded overnight stays.
Two sub-segments are growing in parallel, signalling a market consolidating across the full spectrum: tourists based in metropolitan France (+5%) and, in a sign of accelerating international appeal, tourists based abroad (+9%).
A Rebound After Two Years of Disruption
The 2025 exercise marks a meaningful recovery after tourism revenues dipped a modest 0.6% in 2024. A chikungunya outbreak and the passage of Cyclone Garance in March 2025 had briefly weighed on first-quarter occupancy. The rest of the year more than compensated for those one-off losses. CEROM's analysis notes that unclassified establishments maintained stable occupancy, meaning growth was concentrated exclusively at the top end.
Why It Matters
Réunion Island's push upmarket is no accident: it reflects a deliberate premium positioning strategy pursued in recent years by the regional government and private operators, in a context of intensifying competition from neighbouring destinations — Mauritius, the Maldives, the Seychelles. A high-end tourist generates on average two to three times more revenue per stay than a standard traveller. If Réunion can cement this trend — combining the power of its natural appeal with an improving hotel offer — the island could develop a durable economic lever, less exposed to the vagaries of mass consumption and more resilient to connectivity shocks.
Source: Le Journal des Archipels (16 July 2026), CEROM note — INSEE, IEDOM-IEOM, AFD partnership.