In the past winter season, noticeably fewer vacations were taken in Austria than before the pandemic. There is still a big gap in the balance sheet of the accommodation providers.
Overall, the operators of hotels, guesthouses and holiday apartments booked 52,7 million overnight stays. That was 27,8 percent less than in the last normal season before the coronavirus crisis (2018/19), according to preliminary data from Statistics Austria. Despite the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic, the majority of bookings came from abroad: According to the statistics, three quarters of all overnight stays in winter 2021/22 were for foreign guests. A total of eight million guests decided to stay in Austria in winter 2021/22.
Numbers picked up speed from February
"After a difficult start to the 2021/22 winter tourist season due to the nationwide lockdown in November/December 2021 and the rapid spread of the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus, the number of overnight stays picked up speed again from February 2022," summarized Statistics- Austria Director General Tobias Thomas together. Overall, the past winter season was “significantly more positive than the previous winter season, which was almost completely canceled due to the corona pandemic”.
For the 2018/19 winter season, which was the strongest so far with 72,9 million overnight stays, around 20 million bookings were missing in the past winter. This year in April, the last month of the season, 7,5 million overnight stays and 2,3 million arrivals were reported.
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