In the first half of the 2022/23 season, from November to January, winter holidays in Austria were almost as well booked as before the pandemic. With 30.8 million overnight stays in local accommodation facilities, only eight percent was missing from the time before Corona.
“The course of the first half of the winter season is very positive,” State Secretary for Tourism Susanne Kraus-Winkler (ÖVP) said in a statement. “The rapid recovery is also a clear sign of Austria’s popularity as a winter holiday destination and the strength of tourism in general,” says the tourist expert with satisfaction. Compared to the Corona-ravaged period last year, bookings (then: 19.6 million) increased by no less than 57 percent.
The longing for a winter holiday is still great
The pleasant number of nights also showed “that those who had already announced the end of winter tourism at the beginning of the season due to snow conditions were wrong when it came to guest demand for skiing”. The longing for winter holidays is still great.
15.14 million overnight stays booked in January
At the beginning of January, demand continued to develop positively this year: “Tourism started the new year with an increase in overnight stays of 48.1 percent compared to January 2022 – in January 2022, however, there were still corona-related restrictions,” explains Statistics Austria out. Boss Tobias Thomas. In January this year, 15.14 million overnight stays were booked. For the rest of the current winter season, there is “a similar picture”.
With 30.81 million overnight stays, the first half of the 2022/23 winter tourism season was below the pre-crisis level of 33.50 million. Overnight stays by both foreign and domestic guests (23.6 million and 7.2 million respectively) remained below the level of the 2019/2020 comparison period at 8.4 and 6.9 percent respectively.
Almost a quarter of overnight stays (23.4 percent) in the previous winter of 2022/23 came from holidaymakers from Germany – an increase of 42.2 percent compared to the same period last year. Overnight stays from abroad increased even more year-on-year by 62.4 percent or 9.07 million to 23.61 million. The number of all guest arrivals increased by more than half (56.5 percent) to 3.62 million during the same period.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
