Swiss hotel industry with new overnight stay record in 2023
Published: Thursday, Feb 22nd 2024, 11:40
Updated At: Thursday, Feb 22nd 2024, 11:41
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Swiss hotels set a new guest record in 2023. With 41.8 million overnight stays, they broke the 40 million mark for the first time.
This exceeded the previous record of 39.6 million from 2019 by 5.6%. The hotel industry has therefore finally overcome the slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
In the months from April to December, more overnight stays were recorded than ever before in the last thirty years, the Federal Statistical Office announced in a press release on Thursday.
Following the record season in winter 2022/2023 (November to April), a new high of 24.0 million overnight stays has now also been reached in the 2023 summer season (May to October).
Foreigners arrive in large numbers again
This is thanks to the return of foreign tourists. Their overnight stays increased by almost 22% to 20.9 million in 2023 as a whole. Asian guests made the largest contribution to the increase in foreign demand in 2023 with a total of 4.1 million overnight stays. This is 1.5 million more than a year ago. However, the 2019 level was not reached. Just under a quarter of guests are still missing, as the FSO wrote.
Guests from China contributed the largest increase. With 495,000 overnight stays, they booked more than three times as many overnight stays as in the previous year. They were followed by South Korea (+151 percent) and India (+59 percent). Demand from the Gulf States also increased (+3.6%).
Despite these significant increases, demand from Asian guests remained below the 2019 level, with the difference being particularly marked among Chinese guests (-65%).
Boom with the Americans
In Germany, the most important country of origin, demand rose by 4.2% to 3.8 million overnight stays. The Americans moved up into second place with a strong increase of a third to 3.1 million overnight stays.
"The North American miracle has made us happy," said Switzerland Tourism Director Martin Nydegger to the media in Kilchberg. The economy in the USA has been strong. The Americans had bought a lot of tourist GA travelcards. "We continue to assume that we will be able to retain the loyal group of Silver Surfers."
The British also recorded a strong increase of almost a quarter to 1.7 million overnight stays. The French increased by 6.6 percent to 1.4 million overnight stays. This makes them the fourth most important guest group.
Slight decline among the Swiss
In contrast, the number of domestic guests fell slightly by 1.1 percent to 20.8 million. However, the level of domestic visitors remained very high, the FSO wrote: "Only in 2021 and 2022 were higher values observed."
©Keystone/SDA
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