Not only temperatures, but also the number of overnight stays of tourists in July reached new heights in the Austrian capital with a new record of guests from Arabian countries.
With 1,423,000 overnight stays, the previous year’s numbers have been topped by 11.2 percent. There have been two-digit increases in German, US, Spanish and Chinese tourism, the latter being the 7th strongest country in terms of hotel bookings (41,000 overnight stays, an increase of 24 percent).
The other six countries of this list saw other increases as well, including Great Britain, Switzerland and France, while countries such as France stayed at the previous year’s level and Austria as well as Japan saw slight decreases. The strongest decline was seen in Russia, with a decrease of -32 percent.
At the same time, countries such as South Korea (+28 percent to a total of 26.000 overnight stays), Israel (+38 percent, 17.000 total), Brazil (+45 percent, 16.000 total), Taiwan (+56 percent, 12.000 total) and India (+33 percent, 12.000 total) reported exceptionally strong increases.
However, these figures all get shadowed by the increments presented by Arabian countries. The overnight stays from Saudi Arabian tourists increased by 217 percent to a total of 17.000, those from the Arabian Emirates rose by 183 percent to a total of 20.000 and other Arabian countries in Asia increased by 195 percent to a total of 29.000 overnight stays.
"It’s common to see these markets display strong growth at the end of Ramadan, but this year’s July was especially extreme,” WienTourismus release explained. From January to July, this amounts to 7,755,000 overnight stays and an increase of 6.5 percent when compared to 2014.
All hotel categories drew a profit from July’s great performance, with the average bed utilization reaching 64 percent (7/2014: 60.5 percent) and the occupancy rate climbing to approximately 81 percent (7/2014: roughly 76 percent), despite Vienna’s hotel capacity increasing by 3,800 beds to a new total of 64,600 (+6.2 percent). The net overnight stay revenue of these first two quarters (July’s figures are not public yet) increased by 12.9 percent when compared to 2014 and amounts to 318.4 million Euros.