After a good first half of the year, the local tourism industry is already sounding the alarm: Swiss as well as guests from nearby countries have reacted to the bad weather in July and are increasingly travelling abroad.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA/amva
“The time of Swiss guest records in the pandemic is definitely over,” Switzerland Tourism Director Martin Nydegger told the media in Zurich on Thursday. The share of Swiss guests is decreasing again, competition from the south and the sea is back and in demand, he said. “And the recovery from abroad, from Europe and overseas, continues to take a lot of time.”
Even though the number of guests from distant markets is steadily increasing here, we are not yet able to compensate with this guest segment,” said Monika König, Head of Marketing & Communication, Aletsch Arena, working on behalf of many mountain resorts. Many guests from abroad are still missing.
In the first half of the year, the number of overnight stays rose by 13.8% to 19.5 million compared to the previous year. So far, everything points to more guests staying in Swiss hotels this year than ever before. Even when comparing to the Swiss record and also 2019, pre-Covid-19 year, after six months there have been 3.6% more overnight stays.
However, foreign tourists are not yet back to the same extent as prior to the pandemic: foreign guests accounted for 9.4 million overnight stays in the first half of the year. Overseas tourists in particular are still lagging behind with a drop of 10%.
More
Debate
Hosted by:
Veronica DeVore
Have you encountered “overtourism”? How should popular destinations deal with it?
Places like Venice or Barcelona, and destinations in the Swiss Alps, are struggling with an influx of tourists. What to do?
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Foreign affairs
Magnitsky case: How Switzerland failed to investigate Russian millions
What do you think Switzerland’s Alain Berset can bring to the Council of Europe?
The former interior minister is to become the first Swiss Secretary General of the Council of Europe – which issues should his five-year term focus on?
Swiss sites no longer suitable to store radioactive waste
This content was published on
The Federal Department of the Environment is removing the three siting regions Jura-Südfuss , Südranden and Wellenberg from the sectoral plan for deep geological repositories. They were previously intended as reserve sites for the storage of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste.
Swiss State Secretary warns against cutting development aid
This content was published on
The head of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs criticised the plan to cut CHF500 million a year from development aid and use it for the army.
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
140 evacuated from mountain restaurant after funicular malfunction
This content was published on
Two technical malfunctions occurred on a funicular railway line above Lake Thun occurred Saturday night, resulting in the evacuation of 140 people.
Swiss army officers account for 121,000 hotel stays in 2022
This content was published on
Officer-level staff largely spend the night in hotels rather than barracks, leading to significant costs, the NZZ am Sonntag reports.
Mixed results for landscape protection in Switzerland
This content was published on
Landscape conservation has been strengthened over the past ten years. But recent parliamentary decisions are calling these achievements into question.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.