Austria's record winter: 72 million overnight stays and a tourism boom!

Austria's record winter: 72 million overnight stays and a tourism boom!

The 2024/25 winter season in Austria has proven to be extremely successful. From November 2024 to April 2025, domestic tourism recorded growth, according to preliminary data from The press an increase to 72.25 million overnight stays and 20.55 million guests. This corresponds to the highest number of arrivals in history, as confirmed by Statistics Austria.

Compared to the previous season, overnight stays increased by 1.6 percent, indicating that Austria has almost reached the level of winter 2018/19, when 72.92 million overnight stays were recorded. Particularly noteworthy was the increase in overnight stays in April 2025, which was 23.9 percent higher than the previous year, which is primarily due to the late celebration of Easter.

Origin of guests and regional distribution

The majority of overnight stays came from German neighbors and from within the country. 69 percent of overnight stays came from guests from three main countries: Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. 25.9 million overnight stays came from Germany, which corresponds to a decrease of 1.1 percent compared to the previous season. However, domestic overnight stays rose by 1.2 percent to 5.92 million, while Dutch guests recorded an increase of 2.5 percent.

The strongest regions in winter sports were Tyrol and Salzburg, which together generated 57.9 percent of all overnight stays. Tyrol shone with 26.4 million overnight stays, followed by Salzburg with 15.5 million. Vienna also contributed to the balance with an impressive increase of 10.1 percent to 8.9 million overnight stays. Other federal states such as Styria, Vorarlberg and Carinthia are stagnating or have recorded minor losses in overnight stays.

Current trends and booking highs

The months of January and February were the months with the highest bookings of the season, with around 46 percent of all bookings taking place. A total of 33.2 million overnight stays were registered in these two months. This positive development is also reflected in the figures for the first calendar quarter of 2025, where a total of 54 million overnight stays were registered, although with a decrease of 0.8 percent compared to the previous year.

Particularly noteworthy is the increase in overnight stays by domestic guests, which rose by 1.6 percent to around 16.5 million. Foreign guests accounted for 55.8 million overnight stays, with holidaymakers from Germany accounting for the largest share. Overall, the three main countries Germany, Austria and the Netherlands contributed 68 percent of overnight stays, which underlines the importance of these markets for domestic tourism.

In summary, it can be said that the 2024/25 winter season in Austria was very successful despite small setbacks and the tourist numbers came close to pre-pandemic levels. Loud Small newspaper There is great anticipation among tourism providers for the coming seasons who want to build on these successes.