Last year, the pandemic virtually stopped tourist life in Austria

The occupancy of Austrian hotels fell to a quarter last year.

The pandemic of the new coronavirus virtually stopped tourist life in Austria last year. Hotels, boarding houses and holiday flats were occupied by only about a quarter in the summer half of 2020 (from May to October). "Foreign guests did not come for the pandemic, and despite the promotion of Austrian holidays in Austria, bed occupancy decreased by 12.4% to 24.1%," Tobias Thomas, Director General of Statistik Austria, told APA. This means that three of the four beds remained empty. In the case of self-employed persons in the area of ​​accommodation (except camping), the occupancy of accommodation capacities in the summer season 2020 fell by 15.8% year-on-year to 26.3%. Private accommodation providers recorded a decrease of 3.3% to 18%. However, the available beds were only one third used before the crisis. During the winter season 2019/2020 (November 2019 to April 2020) the total utilization averaged 30.5%, the year before it was 37.7%. Entrepreneurs recorded an average utilization rate of 33.3%, ie 8.4% less than in the 2018/2019 season. Private accommodation providers earned only on every fifth bed, occupancy last year decreased by 3.8% year on year to 22.5%. A total of 68,402 accommodation facilities (excluding camping) were registered in Austria in the 2019/2020 tourist year (November 2019 to October 2020), with approximately 1.14 million beds available. Year-on-year, the number of beds increased by only 0.9% and the number of companies by 1.5%. Half of the available beds (50.6%) were in the federal states of Tyrol and Salzburg. Tyrol offered 352,010 beds (an increase of 0.4%) and Salzburg 226,675 beds (an increase of 1.7%).