Salzburg’s 2010 overnight stay figures resemble Mozart Year level
Salzburg recorded more overnight stays in 2010 than in the previous three years, but the hotels’ occupancy rate is still low.Peoples Party (ÖVP) Vice Mayor Harald Preuner said today (Tues) that hotels and guesthouses in the city registered 2.2 million overnight stays between January and December 2010. He pointed out this was the best annual performance since 2006 when Salzburg celebrated the Mozart Year, in which various events were held to mark the 250th anniversary of the famous composers birth.Figures presented today also show that the occupancy rate of hotel beds in the city one of Austrias main tourism hotspots edged up by just three per cent year on year to 49.6 per cent in 2010.Statistics also reveal that the average duration of stay was just 1.8 days last year. “The increased popularity of short-term trips is an international trend,” Salzburg tourism chief Herbert Brugger explained.Brugger also announced that a majority of 53 per cent of tourists who chose Salzburg last year opted for four-star hotels.The tourism official said the strongest year on year increase in overnight stays was registered in June when there were 17.6 per cent more overnight bookings in the city than in the same month of 2009. The highest number of overnight stays was recorded in September with 232,000, up by 17.5 per cent compared to the same month of the previous year.The number of overnight stays by Russian tourists soared by 25 per cent year on year. Figures for holidaymakers from Australia (32 per cent) and Switzerland (seven per cent) also improved year on year.Salzburgs 2010 overnight stay statistic comes on the heels of news from Statistik Austria which shows that the number of overnight stays across Austria improved by just 0.4 per cent last year compared to 2009. An overall 124.82 million overnight stays were recorded in hotels across the country.Tourism branch businesspeople in Vienna did best last year as hotels in the capital reported a 10.3 per cent year on year increase of overnight stays to 10.86 million. Viennese hotel managers are expected to reduce their prices since 14 new resorts will start doing business in the city in the coming years.