Record broken

Tourism starts the summer season with momentum

Two thirds of overnight stays (6.2 million) were accounted for by holidaymakers from abroad.(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Fokke Baarssen - stock.adobe.com)

Domestic tourism got off to an impressive start this summer. In May, the number of overnight bookings in hotels, guesthouses and vacation apartments rose by 14.6% to 9.5 million compared to the same month last year. German holidaymakers in particular made a large number of bookings.

The figures at the start of the season have never been so high. "This is the highest overnight stay result ever recorded for the month of May," emphasized Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas. The increase in bookings was also due to the fact that the Whitsun vacations in large German federal states fell entirely in May this year.

Germans love vacations in Austria
Two thirds of overnight stays (6.2 million) were made by holidaymakers from abroad, which corresponds to an increase in bookings of 21.1 percent compared to the previous year. More than half of these (3.65 million) came from guests from Germany, who increased their bookings by almost a third (plus 30.4 percent) this year.

221,400 overnight stays by Dutch guests
Far behind Germany was the second most important market of origin for holidaymakers, the Netherlands: bookings from there also increased significantly by 11.4 percent to 221,400 overnight stays. There were also massive growth rates at a low level among the Chinese, whose bookings more than doubled year-on-year to 57,800 nights (up 138.1 percent).

Guest arrivals rose by 13.6 percent to 3.5 million. Around two thirds (2.2 million) came from abroad (up 17.9 percent), around one third (1.3 million) from Austria (up 7 percent).

Overnight bookings increased
In the calendar year to the end of May, overnight bookings increased by 3.3% to 64 million (up 2.1 million) compared to the same period last year - those from abroad by 3.7% to 49.1 million, those from Austria by 2.2% to 14.9 million.

The number of guest arrivals rose by 5.6 percent to 17.7 million in the period from January to May compared to the same period last year - from abroad by 6.3 percent to 12.4 million people (up 6.3 percent), from Austria to 5.3 million (up 4 percent).