Overnight visitors' numbers hit record

VIENNA - The Austrian tourism industry had seen a record number of overnight stays in hotels and other lodgings in 2016, surpassing the 140 million mark for the first time, official data has revealed.

The total number, 140.85 million, was 5.65 million or 4.2 percent more than that reported in 2015, with all states in the country reporting an increase, according to Statistics Austria.

Both domestic and foreign guests boosted the numbers, since the overall number of stays for each increased by over 4 percent.

Germany remained the largest source of guests staying in Austria. The number of overnight stays from this group increased 4.9 percent to reach 52.64 million in 2016, topping domestic guests' stays at 38.01 million.

A further record was also broken for the number of overall visitors, surpassing 40 million for the first time, to reach 41.45 million overall.

This marks a 5.1 percent increase over 2015, again with both domestic and international guest numbers seeing strong increases, of over 5 percent each.

Xinhua

(China Daily 05/14/2017 page37)