Swiss mountain hotels with a strong winter season
Published: Monday, Apr 8th 2024, 11:01
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The winter season went well for Swiss mountain hotels. More guests stayed overnight in the mountains than in the previous year. Overall, the number of overnight stays is now back above the pre-pandemic level.
The number of overnight hotel stays in 30 selected winter sports destinations rose by 1.6% to 4.06 million from December to February, according to an analysis of the figures published today by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) by the news agency AWP. This also means that the pre-pandemic 2019/20 season figure of 4.03 million was exceeded again.
Engadin and Zermatt in the lead
In more than half of the destinations included in the analysis, hotel business in this winter quarter was even better than in the previous year. With 614,000 overnight stays, the Upper Engadine with St. Moritz, Pontresina and Sils once again accounted for the most overnight stays. This represents an increase of around 4 percent.
Second-placed Zermatt also improved slightly with an increase of 1.4 percent to 544,000 overnight stays. Like the Upper Engadine, the Valais mountain resort is likely to have benefited from better snow conditions at higher altitudes. Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland also recorded significant growth with an increase of 7.5 percent to 223,000.
Arosa-Lenzerheide with growth
The two Graubünden winter sports destinations of Lenzerheide and Arosa also recorded clearly above-average growth. Ten years ago, the two ski resorts were linked by a connecting cable car. The hopes that both winter sports resorts would benefit from the connection in the form of additional overnight stays in hotels appear to be coming true.
In contrast, Flims-Laax suffered a decline for the second time in a row, with overnight stays falling by 3.7%. The number of overnight stays also fell slightly in Grindelwald (-0.4%). According to the analysis, the clear loser among all destinations was Andermatt with a fall in overnight stays of almost 20%.
Leap year supported
Although the month of March is still missing from the analysis, it is already possible to draw a positive overall conclusion for the winter sports season. The fact that February had one extra day in leap year 2024 is likely to have supported the growth rates somewhat. In the overall view, this is probably not very significant.
In a comparison of Switzerland as a whole, the growth in overnight stays from December to February was slightly more dynamic than in the typical winter sports resorts, with an increase of 3.6%. However, the pent-up demand, particularly in the cities, was also significantly greater than in the mountain regions, which had already performed strongly in previous years.
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