Tourism in Luxembourg stabilized last year. Despite diverging rates of success depending on the sector and region, the tourism sector reported positive numbers for the year 2016, according to State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Francine Closener.
In terms of visitation, it is the fifth consecutive record season of the hotel industry, with a total of 1.74 million overnight stays.
In comparison to 2015, this represents an overall increase of 0.2%, with traditional business tourism progressing by +3.1% and leisure tourism up by +2.9%.
However, the MICE sector – convention tourism in Luxembourg – decreased by 14.8%, after having reached a record high a year earlier (especially in the context of the Luxembourg’s presidency of the EU Council).
In comparison to the 2014 levels, the growth rate of the MICE sector – a developing tourism sector – is still positive by 4%.
Regarding the number of the overnight stays in hotels, they increased especially in the Moselle region (+11.2%) as well as the Mullerthal region (+5.8), while they remained stable in the central regions (+0.1%) and went down in the southern regions as well as the Ardennes region (-2.6% and -3.7% respectively).
The occupancy rate of hotels was 72.2%, down by 0.3% when compared to 2015 numbers.
In terms of camping – an activity which is highly dependent on favorable weather conditions – the number of recorded nights spent (984 000 in total) dropped last year by 1.5% but has remained at a high level for the last five years.
This is also true for youth hostels, whose visitation – 35.2% by residents – has increased by 1% in the last twelve months.
Last year, tourism in Luxembourg benefited the most from leisure sites which attracted the most visitors, compared to museums and guided tours of castles.
In terms of tourist attractions, the most appealing options to tourists remain guided tours of the capital (273 480 last year), which surpass the Parc merveilleux de Bettembourg (222 839), the château de Vianden (171 722), the Casemates du Bock (129 682) and the Mullerthal Trail (105 757).