Great Summer Season For Austrian tourism
With 81.59 million overnight stays, Austrian summer tourism has exceeded its previous best result by 0.8 percent. Austria is a popular tourist destination worldwide and these impressive figures show that we offer our guests a high quality of service and good value for money," says a delighted State Secretary for Tourism, Susanne Kraus-Winkler.
More than two thirds of overnight stays were by guests from abroad, while domestic tourism remained at a stable level despite a slight decline compared to 2023 - compared to 2019, overnight stays by Austrian guests still increased by 2.1 percent. "This makes the 2024 summer season another important milestone in the success story of our tourism," said Kraus-Winkler.
"Although the Asian market is only slowly returning, we were still able to achieve more overnight stays than ever before. This is partly due to the fact that tourism is very flexible when it comes to addressing new markets," explains Kraus-Winkler. Chinese guests, for example, accounted for 421,000 overnight stays this summer, compared to 966,000 overnight stays in summer 2019. In contrast, there was significant growth in overnight stays by US guests: Compared to summer 2023, they rose by 15.3 percent to 1.49 million overnight stays - compared to 2019, the increase is 13.7 percent.
The 10-year comparison also shows that tourism is a reliable growth industry: In 2014, there were 67.2 million overnight stays, which is an increase of around 21 percent compared to 2024. Likewise, overnight stays by foreign guests rose by 24 percent from 46.7 million at the time, and overnight stays by domestic guests rose by 15 percent from 20.6 million.
The long-term trend is also continuing in the accommodation categories: Compared to summer 2014, overnight stays in the 5/4-star category increased by around 16 percent to 28.1 million. Commercial holiday homes are still particularly in demand, increasing by around 145 percent to 9.1 million overnight stays between 2014 and 2024.
For Kraus-Winkler, "the encouraging growth shows above all that tourism is growing where it can. There have certainly been some spatial and temporal concentrations here and there. In addition, we have also started to consistently carry out a lot of preventive work, especially in recent years. Visitor guidance and proper guest management is the major task for the future of Austrian tourism," says Kraus-Winkler.
For example, the federal government's tourism policy has enshrined the annual measurement of tourism acceptance in law and developed important sustainability initiatives - from the reorientation of commercial tourism promotion, to a national certification strategy for companies and destinations, to an ESG data hub for tourism. "The goal must always be to ensure balanced tourism in the future," says Kraus-Winkler.
