Positive balance

Winter tourism enjoys a surge in bookings

In the strongest winter holiday month of February alone, bookings increased by 5.7 percent.

(Bild: ©Gorilla - stock.adobe.com)

This year's winter season has gone well so far - thanks in part to the strong surge in bookings during the semester break. Between November 2023 and February 2024, overnight stays in hotels, guesthouses and vacation apartments increased by 4.9 percent year-on-year to 50.6 million.

Only around 11 million of these overnight stays were accounted for by domestic vacationers - an increase of just 3.6 percent.

Overnight stays exceeded the 50 million mark in the four-month period for the first time since coronavirus. This means that tourism performed better this year than in the same period in 2018/19 (49.6 million overnight stays), but worse than in 2019/20 (53.2 million bookings) immediately before the pandemic.

18.9 million overnight stays in Tyrol
The majority of bookings in the 2023/24 season to date were once again made in Tyrol, the most popular federal state in winter, where overnight stays rose by 3.8% to 18.9 million. Salzburg ranked second with 11.6 million booked nights (up 3 percent). It was followed by Vienna, where city tourism recovered noticeably by 14.7 percent year-on-year to 5.2 million overnight stays.

Holidaymakers come in greater numbers, but for shorter periods
While overnight bookings rose by just under 5 percent, the number of guest arrivals increased significantly by almost 7 percent to 13.8 million.

In the strongest winter holiday month of February alone, bookings increased by 5.7%.

(Bild: ©Gorilla - stock.adobe.com)

In February alone, the busiest winter holiday month, bookings increased by 5.7 percent. "The semester break in Austria, which is spread over three dates, and the winter vacations in neighboring countries caused overnight stays in hotels, guesthouses and vacation apartments to rise to 18.5 million in February 2024," says Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas. 

Germans and Dutch love Austria
Tourism in February was mainly driven by holidaymakers from abroad. Germans were by far the strongest group of guests from abroad with 6.4 million bookings, followed by the Dutch with three million overnight stays. Domestic holidaymakers booked 3.5 million nights (up 2.3 percent).