Austrian tourism has suffered a decline in overnight stays in this winter season. Mainly foreign guests are staying away this year.
The number of overnight stays declined even further in March. The reason was the late Easter, which came in April this year. Between November and March, the number of overnight stays fell by 4% to 60.21 million. In March alone, the decline amounted to 11.2%. This was announced by Austrian Statistics Authority.
In the first five months of the 2016/17 season, the number of nights spent by tourists in Austrian accommodation facilities fell by 5.1% to 46.69 million. The number of guests decreased by 1.3 percent to 11.44 million. German overnight stays fell by 9.9% to 22.3 million, while the number of guests from neighboring countries decreased by 5.7% to 5.22 million.
As far as foreign visitors are concerned, the commercial accommodation industry suffered a fall of 4.1% to 36.47 million, a percentage point better than the entire accommodation industry. This was also the case of guest numbers, which fell by 0.2 percent in commercial accommodation facilities. The entire industry, on the other hand, suffered a 1.3% loss.
However, the amount of visitors from the Czech republic boosted Austrian tourism between November and March by 4.3% to 410,900. The number of their overnight stays rose by 3.5% to 1.54 million. There were also more Russian visitors, with an 8.7% increase in overnight stays, in contrast to the sharp decline in the last two periods of comparison. Meanwhile Austria’s main source markets suffered declines along with Germany. Netherlands (-3%), Switzerland (-2.8%) and the UK (-2.2%) all declined in terms of inflow to Austria.
But there was a positive increase in domestic visitors. The number of overnight stays increased by 1.7% to 4.68 million (4.40 million in commercial accommodation facilities). In the five-month period the number rose by 0.2% to 13.52 million (12.35 million in commercial accommodation facilities).
Overall, 16.13 million guests (-0.4%) were registered in Austria in the winter season 2016/17. The total number of overnight stays was 60.21 million (-4%). The hotel industry recorded 14.02 million guests (+0.4%), with a total of 48.82 million overnight stays (-3%).
In March, a total of 3.48 million holidaymakers were registered in Austria. This is 6.9% fewer than last year. Despite a rise of 2.9% to 1.01 million in domestic tourism, there was a sharp drop in foreigners by 10.4% to 2.47 million. The number of overnight stays fell by 11.2% to 13.84 million in March, for domestic customers by 3.8% to 2.85 million and for foreigners by 12.9% to 10.99 million.
According to the official Austrian tourism statistics, the trend seems to be going towards shorter stays. In the previous winter season the average stay was 3.7 nights and this season the number was similar. This applies to both foreigners and domestic guests.