Almost 7 out of 10 overnight stays are booked directly at the hotel.

"During the pandemic, it was proven again that the saying 'better direct' is not just an empty phrase when it comes to hotel bookings," says Markus Gratzer, Secretary General of the Austrian Hotel Association (ÖHV), summing up the results of a current hotel sales study: 68,7 percent of bookings took place in the crisis year 2021 via direct channels such as website, e-mail or telephone: an increase of 7 percentage points compared to 2019!

The sales study was prepared on behalf of the ÖHV by the renowned Swiss economics and tourism researcher Roland Schegg from the HES-SO Valais-Wallis: "The background to the development is changing guest needs. Especially in difficult times, guests have a greater need for information. The direct contact person in the hotel is absolutely a reason to choose this path,” explains Schegg. In addition, the guest structure has changed during the pandemic: There were fewer foreign guests and hardly any guests from long-distance markets, who traditionally tend to book via online booking platforms.