Press release: 12.667-258/21

Summer season 2021 ends positively compared to 2020, still below pre-crisis level of 2019

Vienna, 2021-11-26 – The tourist summer season of 2021 ended with 66.37 million nights spent, according to preliminary results from Statistics Austria. This corresponds to an increase of 23.3% compared to the summer of the previous year.

"In the second Corona summer, tourism in Austria was able to recover slightly from the crisis, thus, nights spent are 16.0% away from the pre-crisis level in 2019. In comparison with the corresponding months of 2019, the number of overnight stays in September was already above the pre-crisis level, but in October it was again slightly below it," said Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas.

German guests were primarily responsible for the year-on-year increase in nights spent in the 2021 summer season. A total of 28.32 million nights spent and thus 42.7% of nights spent from May to October 2021 were attributable to guests from Germany, followed by a wide margin by guest from the Netherlands (3.59 million nights spent), Switzerland and Liechtenstein (1.76 million) and the Czech Republic (1.18 million). More than one-third of guest nights (36.2%; 24.05 million) were spent by domestic guests in the 2021 summer season (summer 2020: 22.20 million; summer 2019: 23.30 million).

October 2021: nights spent still below the level of October 2019

In October 2021, the last month of the summer season, a total of 7.95 million nights spent were reported in domestic accommodation establishments. Thus, although October nights spent are 6.8% below those of the pre-crisis year 2019, they are 83.2% higher than in October of last year. Both nights spent and arrivals in October, continue to reflect the trend that Austrians like to travel in their own country since the beginning of the pandemic. 9.2% more guest nights by domestic guests were registered in October 2021 than in October 2019 before the pandemic. Compared to the same month last year, these 3.07 million guest nights correspond to an increase of 26.1%. Arrivals of domestic guest even increased by 38.2% to 1.20 million in October 2021 compared to 2020.

The highest increases by federal state were registered in Vienna, Tyrol and Vorarlberg. More than five times as many nights spent of foreign guests were registered in Vienna (+463.1%; 0.68 million), more than three times as many in Tyrol (+257.4%; 2.02 million) and more than twice as many in Vorarlberg (+142.4%; 0.43 million) compared to October 2020.

Calendar year 2021 to date: nearly 26 million fewer nights spent than in the previous year

In the current calendar year (January to October 2021) guest nights (70.11 million) were 27.0% or 25.92 million below the level of the same period last year. The number of guests decreased by 20.3% to 19.64 million in the same period.

Three quarters of winter season guest nights take place in January to April

With November 2021, the winter season 2021/22 starts, with the corresponding season of 2020/21 ending with 5.59 million nights spent, and the 2019/20 winter season ending with 59.68 million guest nights. For the 2018/19 season, the one before the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 72.92 million guest nights were reported. An analysis by month shows that the period from January to April is of greater importance in terms of the share of nights spent than the first third of the winter season. However, there are regional differences in this respect, with more than 80% of overnight stays are spent in the federal states Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Salzburg, while the share of nights spent in Vienna, Lower Austria, Burgenland and Upper Austria is significantly below the Austrian average (77.2%).

For more detailed results and further information please refer to the German Version.