„Free rooms“ is the norm in Austrian hotels over the year – the occupancy rate of the beds in the tourism year 2017/18 (November to October) averages only 37.3 per cent in winter and 35.6 per cent in summer, according to data Statistics Austria.
Almost two-thirds of the time, the beds in hotels, guesthouses and holiday apartments thus remain unused. In the already better booked winter of 2017/18, however, capacity utilization increased slightly by 1.1 percentage points compared with the previous year, and stagnation in the summer of 2018 (plus 0.1 percentage points).
In 2017/18, around 1.13 million beds were available to vacationers in 66,420 commercial and private accommodation providers – an increase of 1.6 and 2.5 percent, respectively. Nearly 300,000 beds, that is a good quarter (26.4 percent), were privately let. Zell am See (Salzburg) accounts for around one third of Austria’s highest share of private beds.
Occupancy in private quarters particularly low
Occupancy was particularly low in the private sector, as only 16.4 percent of all tourist overnight stays were made by private lodgers: in winter, their beds were used on average at 26.5 percent, in the summer at 20.8 percent.
The luxury hotel business is doing much better. Four- and five-star establishments reached a capacity utilization of 53.7 percent in summer and 50.7 percent in winter during the reporting period. The second strongest category in the summer were three-star hotels with 40.8 percent, the second strongest in winter were commercial apartments and houses with 38.8 percent.
Most of the overnight stays are handled by Tyrol and Salzburg – in the past tourism year, the two federal states also accounted for more than half (51.1%) of the beds (excluding camping), 360,132 to Tyrol and 219,667 to Salzburg. This was also an increase of 1.5 or one percent over the year before.
Tyrol: 450 beds per 1,000 inhabitants
The number of overnight stays in Vienna grew even more dynamically, rising by 6.5 percent to around 79,000. In the populous federal capital, however, there are only 40 beds per 1,000 inhabitants – no comparison with Tyrol. There is the highest density in Austria, with around 450 beds per 1,000 inhabitants.
In absolute terms, there were the most beds for tourists in Vienna in 2017/18 (77,095 in winter and 78,899 in summer). Behind them were Saalbach-Hinterglemm in Upper Austria (17,867 and 15,100 respectively), Sölden in Tyrol (17,247 in winter) and the city of Salzburg (15,073 in summer). The beds were best utilized in Vienna (with 62.8 percent in summer and 49 percent in winter), followed by Tyrol (with 43.7 percent in winter) and Burgenland (with 41.1 percent in summer).
