Austria Signals the Start of Winter Tourism Season with Massive Numbers

Austria signals the beginning of winter tourism season with impressive number of overnight stays: 4.9 million

In November, the number of overnight stays in Austria increased by 49.5 percent compared to last year. This marks a positive start to the winter tourism season.

Statistik Austria, Austria's Federal Statistical Office and an agency that collects and publishes official statistics in the country has released data showing that there were 4.88 million overnight stays in November.

Tobias Thomas, Director General of Statistics Austria commented on the data. He said that November 2018 was the third most valuable month, just behind 2019 SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

Austrian tourism began the winter season with 4.9 million overnight stays at hotels, guesthouses, and holiday apartments after suffering severe losses from two Corona winters. He said that 2022 was the third-highest November value after 2018, which had 5.23 million, and 2019, with 5.30 million.

Statistics also reveal that this November's number of guests in Austria was 0.8 percent higher than in November 2017.

Data on the origin market for tourists shows that more than half are from abroad, or 2.85 million, which is 57.1 percent more than in November 2021.

Tourists from Germany lead the list with 1.15 Million overnight stays. This is 40.4 percent more than in November last year.

After two years of pandemics that brought down tourism and travel in the country, the November tourism numbers are now following the same trend as the summer months of Austria.

Statistik Austria data for this period shows that there were 9.09 million holiday trips made by Austrian citizens with at least one overnight stay between July and September 2022. This includes visits to family members and friends. This represents a 14 percent increase over the previous year with 7.97 million trips, and 29 percent more than the 7.04 million vacation trips recorded in the pre-pandemic season of 2019.

During the summer, the proportion of 15-year-olds who have taken at least one vacation between the months of July and August rose seven percentage points to 63.1 percent or 4.81 million travelers.

The season saw a significant increase in travel intensity compared to the summer before the pandemic which was 57%.

Source: schengenvisainfo.com