AUSTRIA LOST MORE THAN HALF A MILLION NIGHTS, IN JANUARY

The number of overnight stays in Austria's tourism brought the anticipated collapse in January. The recently published numbers of Austria's statistics show a minus of 3.3 percent to 13.87 million overnight stays. In the previous year, there were ca. 470,000 more overnight stays. However, these numbers only give a distorted picture of the severity of the retrogression because the capital city Vienna is included in these values, which recorded an extreme January plus of 9.9 percent.

The thermal springs intense federal states Burgenland and Styria were able to profit from the lack of snow in the Northern Alps and reached increments of 1.6 percent or rather 0.8 percent in January 2014.

Lower Austria reached a plus of 1 percent which was made possible by the thermal springs and also the Vienna strength which also radiates onto the surrounding communities.

If you only consider the winter sports federal states Salzburg, Carinthia, Vorarlberg and Tirol - which in the previous year made up more than fourth fifths (81.4 percent) of the overnight stays in January - then this year's decline only amounts to almost 5 percent or rather ca. 570,000 nights. The share of all January overnight stays in Austria dropped to 77.7 percent in this winter sport quartet.

There was no lack of guest interests: Nationwide arrivals went up ca. 1.1 percent in January or rather 34,700 guests to 3.11 million. Increases were recorded in all federal states with the exception of Tirol (-1.9 percent or 21,300 less) and Vorarlberg (-2.6 percent or 6,500 less).

The winter is still good thanks to a strong preseason and great results to Christmas: From November 2013 until January 2014, the number of overnight stays went up by 0.4 percent to 28.83 million, and those arrivals went up by 2.4 percent to 7.87 million. In both cases, new peak values were reached in the first half of winter. Up until the end of April, this advance might strongly go down.