Swiss tourism: Hotel nights dropped in first half 2016

9 years ago - Published in Finance, Fundamental Analysis

The Swiss tourism industry saw a drop in the first half: the hotel industry registered 16.8 million overnight stays, with a 1.2% decline compared to the same period last year. The decrease was due to foreign guests (-2.5%), while domestic demand has held (+ 0.5%).

According to figures published today by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) at the regional level, the Ticino has a low step back (-0.1% to 916'190 nights), an improvement compared to the same period of 2015 (-5, 2%).

Mountain regions are confirmed in trouble in the first half 2016: Grisons (-4.5%), and Valais (-3.7%) and Bernese Oberland (-3.6%), while against the trend are cities like Geneva (+ 0.2%) and especially Zurich (+ 1.6%).

As mentioned, while the domestic figure was confirmed (7.7 million nights, + 36,000), lacking in major tourism regions were foreigners: the 9.1 million registered nights are colder than 234'000 in the first six months of 2015. Germany saw the biggest drop of all the countries of origin in absolute terms, a decrease of 136,000 nights (-6.8%).

Among other nations, there was the decline of tourists from Russia (-37'000, -17%), Belgium (-22'000, -7.4%), the Netherlands (-19'000, -6.4 %) and France (-11'000, -1.7%). rather positive news from the United Kingdom (+ 28,000, + 3.3%) and the USA (+ 44,000, + 5.6%).

The FSO has also published the figures for the month of June alone. The overall figure is 3.1 million nights, with a contraction of 3.2% yoy that the Office of Statistics specialists explained by the bad weather. The effect was immediate fact on the question of indigenous customers (-3.3% to 1.3 million), which presents a similar setback in a foreign currency (-3.2% to 1.8 million). To underline the collapse of the Gulf countries (-50%), China (-19%), India (-10%) and Germany (-6.5%). Guests from the United States (+ 7.9%) and South Korea (+ 21%) registered a considerable increase instead.

Nine out of fourteen regions recorded decreases compared to June of 2015. The Ticino shows a decline of 1.7% (at 235'344 nights), but even worse it went to the Lucerne area (-5.9%), to Bernese Oberland (-6.6%), the Grisons (-8.4%) and Valais (-10%). Increases were observed in contrast to Geneva (+ 0.4%), Vaud (+ 1.9%) and Bern (+ 4.2%).