Best May for Vienna tourism industry

The Vienna tourism industry is currently breaking one record after another. The top result of one million bednights in April was followed by the best May in the history of Vienna tourism.

1,055,000 Vienna holidaymakers in May

What this means is that – like April – never before have so many visitors travelled to Vienna as in May 2011. Expressed in figures, there were 1,005,000 guest bednights in April (+13.2% compared to April 2010) and 1,055,000 in May. This represented a slight increase of 1.3% on May the previous year.

The Russians are coming…

Vienna owes this growth to a new record May to visitors from non German speaking countries. Easily the biggest increase was chalked up for tourists from Russia. In a comparison of the months of May in 2010 and 2011, this was a huge 52%, but even measured over the first five months of the current and previous years Russia still headed the countries ranking with 44%. Other substantial increases were achieved for promising markets like Central and South America (+38%), China (+41%), the Arab countries in Asia (+50%), and even for Turkey (+43%).

Decline in visitors from Austria and Germany

On the other hand, however, there was a decline in the number of visitors from Austria and Germany, whilst the volume from Switzerland remained unchanged. However, according to Vienna tourism industry analysts, this was more than offset by positive growth in the number of visitors from the USA, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Japan.

Benefit felt by nearly all hotels

Virtually all hotels with the exception of four-star establishments benefited from this excellent result for May. Average bed occupancy in the month of May was 62.6% (5/2010: 65.4%), equivalent to a room occupancy of around 78% (5/2010: about 82%). However, Vienna also increased its accommodation capacity by some 2,300 beds (+4.8%) in the intervening period from May last year to May 2011. In the first five months of this year, a total of 4,062,000 bednights were registered in Vienna, 4.4% more than the previous year. Hotel bed occupancy during this five-month period averaged 50.6% (1-5/2010: 50.0%), with room occupancy of around 63% (1-5/2010: 62%).

Net turnover also up

The Vienna hospitality sector generated net turnover from bednights of 132.9 million euros, 11.9% up on the figure for the first third of 2010 (data available till April 2011).

Overview of Vienna tourism figures in May 2011: