Tourism industry in Austria has been doing extremely well in recent times. A recent study has proved that more and more jobs in Austria are involved in tourism sector one way or the other.
According to a recent study done by Management Center Innsbruck and published on Traveller-online.at, there are 661,000 jobs in Austria that rely on tourism industry, which means that one in five jobs in Austria depends on the situation in tourism. Such result shows that the industry is very important for the Austrian economy.
Hans Schenner, the chairman of the Federal Tourism and Leisure Industry of the Economic Chamber Austria (WKO), said that Austrian tourism industry had done very well even during the crisis year of 2009. No major loss in jobs was recorded. To the contrary, the number of people working in tourism industry increased in 2009. In 2010, the number of employees working in both hotel and leisure industry has risen from 200,000 to 240,000 so far.
Also, the services and supplies for hotels come very often from local sources. The restaurants are supplied by the local farmers too. These people are then dependent on tourism more than one would imagine. A tourist town with a turnover of 100 million euros secures not only around 470 jobs in hotel industry and 570 jobs in catering, but also about 130 jobs in transport (taxis, cable cars, etc.) and 120 jobs in retail.
The importance of tourism industry in Austria has been growing. Between 1995 and 2009, the gross value of hospitality sector increased by 22.25 percent and the transport and communication sector by 23.34%. Such growth is much faster than for example in building industry which has increased by only 10.24% over the same period.