Swiss hotels set record for overnight stays in 2023

Towns like Lucerne benefited from the rise in foreign guests in Switzerland in 2023. KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / URS FLUEELER

Swiss hotels set a new guest record in 2023. With 41.8 million overnight stays, they broke the 40 million mark for the first time.

This surpassed the previous record of 39.6 million from 2019. The hotel industry has therefore finally overcome the slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

In the months from April to December, more overnight stays were recorded than ever before in the last thirty years, the Federal Statistical Office announced in a press release on Thursday. Following the record season in winter 2022/2023 (November to April), a new high of 24 million overnight stays was also reached in the 2023 summer season (May to October).

This is thanks to the return of foreign tourists. Their overnight stays increased by almost 22% to 20.9 million in 2023 as a whole.

In contrast, the number of domestic guests fell slightly by 1.1% to 20.8 million. However, the level remained very high, the statistical wrote: “Only in 2021 and 2022 were higher values observed.”

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

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