Domestic tourism had a record summer season this year. According to Statistics Austria, 80.9 million overnight stays were recorded in Austria between May and October, more than in any other summer since statistics began.
Austrian tourism has recovered from the Covid pandemic. City tourism in particular suffered from the corona-related travel restrictions. Now he is setting record figures. Foreign guests in particular contributed to this: the number of overnight stays increased by 6.5 percent to around 57 million. There was a strong increase in Vienna, while Carinthia was in the red.
Only Carinthia with min
In Vienna, overnight stays from May to October increased by almost a fifth compared to the comparable period in 2022. In contrast, Carinthia, which increasingly attracted domestic holidaymakers who could not travel abroad during the years of the pandemic, was the only state that recorded a decrease in the number of overnight stays this summer (minus 3.5 percent).
Throughout Austria, overnight stays increased by 3.9 percent to 80.9 million. More than two-thirds of overnight stays were due to guests from abroad, Tobias Thomas, Director General of Austrian Statistics, said in a press release on Tuesday. Of these, approximately 31.6 million overnight stays were made by German tourists, whose number of overnight stays increased by 1.4 percent in the summer season.
Tourists from Asia again
The number of overnight stays also increased in the summer among other important guest groups such as the Dutch, Swiss and Czechs. “It is particularly gratifying that overnight stays from Asia, such as China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, are also increasing again – albeit from a low level,” says State Secretary for Tourism Susanne Kraus-Winkler (ÖVP).
On the other hand, the Austrians themselves were a bit lacking, because they spent fewer nights in their own country this summer than the year before. Statistics Austria recorded a 1.9 percent decline in overnight stays by domestic guests to 23.85 million.
Just below pre-pandemic levels all year
The calendar year to date, 2023, has 134.54 million overnight stays, which is only 0.5 percent lower than the value for the same period in 2019, i.e. before the start of the pandemic.
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.
