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Winter tourism almost back to pre-corona level at half-time

Winter tourism almost back to pre-corona level at half-time
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With 30.8 million overnight stays in domestic accommodation facilities, only 8 percent were missing from the time before Corona, as can be seen from the preliminary data from Statistics Austria from today, Friday. Compared to the corona-plagued prior-year period, bookings (then: 19.6 million) increased by a good 57 percent.

“The course of the first half of the winter season is very positive,” said Secretary of State for Tourism Susanne Kraus-Winkler (ÖVP) in a statement. “The quick recovery is also a clear sign of Austria’s popularity as a winter holiday destination and the strength of tourism in general,” says the tourist expert happily.

The pleasing number of overnight stays also showed “that those who had already announced the end of winter tourism due to the snow conditions at the beginning of the season were not right when it came to guest demand for skiing”. The desire for winter holidays is still great, as a survey by the national tourism marketing organization Österreich Werbung has shown. 56 percent of Austrians said they were planning a winter holiday. “This has mostly happened and skiing is by far the most popular winter sport,” says Kraus-Winkler. “The proportion of guests who did winter sports in winter 2021/22 was 91 percent, according to a ski potential study on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, note) 2022.”

Sustainable winter offer for Austria

“We therefore want to work on innovative concepts in the coming months, apart from the opinions that have already been expressed many times about the development of winter sports, together with the Austrian Tourist Board and the federal states,” says Kraus-Winkler. Nevertheless, the next 25 years as a winter destination “have to be planned properly today if we want to continue to successfully maintain Austria’s image as a winter destination in 2050”. Due to the climate changes, sustainable strategic orientations and decisions are needed for winter tourism in Austria. In order to keep the offer competitive, “we must now begin to gently transition into new possible offer scenarios,” emphasized the State Secretary.

At the beginning of January, demand continued to develop positively this year: “Tourism started the new year with an increase in overnight stays of 48.1 percent compared to January 2022 – however, corona-related restrictions still applied in January 2022,” explained Statistics Austria boss Tobias Thomas. This year in January there were 15.14 million booked overnight stays. For the half-time of the current winter season, there is “a similar picture”.

Overnight stays below pre-crisis level

With 30.81 million overnight stays, the first half of the 2022/23 winter tourism season was below the pre-crisis level of 33.50 million. Overnight stays by both foreign and domestic guests (23.6 million and 7.2 million respectively) fell short of the level of the 2019/20 comparison period by 8.4 and 6.9 percent respectively.

Almost a quarter of the overnight bookings (23.4 percent) in the previous winter of 2022/23 came from holidaymakers from within Germany – an increase of 42.2 percent compared to the same period last year. Overnight stays from abroad rose even more strongly year-on-year by 62.4 percent or 9.07 million to 23.61 million. The number of all guest arrivals increased by more than half (56.5 percent) to 3.62 million in the same period.

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