Demand for Swiss hotels close to pre-pandemic level

Posing in front of parliament in November 2022. However, the number of tourists from Asia remained low. © Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

Swiss hotels received almost as many guests in 2022 as they did before the Covid-19 pandemic. Tourists from Europe and America have largely returned, but Covid restrictions in China and Japan meant numbers from those countries remained low.

Compared with 2021, which was still weak as a result of the pandemic, the number of total overnight stays rose by 29% to 38.2 million, the Federal Statistical Office said in a statementExternal link on Thursday.

After two years strongly marked by Covid, demand returned to a pre-pandemic level with a result higher than that of 2017. However, it was still slightly lower than in 2018 (-1.5%) and 2019 (-3.3%).

The Swiss tourism industry benefited from the fact that, as in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, more Swiss people stayed at home for their holidays. Compared with 2019, domestic guests accounted for an increase of 17.5% in overnight stays. For the first time, they exceeded the symbolic mark of 21 million overnight stays (21.1 million).

But guests from Europe also came to Switzerland in droves again in 2022. The number of visitors from Germany, the most important foreign market, was just 8% lower than in 2019. The Benelux countries were only 3.4% down and France was even 2.8% up on 2019.

Chinese tourists remained absent

Despite the unstable situation in Europe caused by the war in Ukraine, significantly more tourists also came to Switzerland from the US, the Gulf States and India in 2022.

However, there is still a shortfall of 35% in the overseas markets compared with 2019. This is mainly due to the fact that the majority of guests from China and Japan are still absent as a result of strict Covid restrictions. There was a 91% drop in visitors from China compared to 2019.

Overall, demand from abroad doubled compared with the previous year to 17.2 million overnight stays. After the lifting of Covid restrictions in China, the hope is that more Chinese tourists will now head to Switzerland.