Vienna: Record overnight figures for first half of 2015

Vienna registered around 6.3 million visitor overnights between January and June 2015 - about 5.4% more than for the same period the previous year.

"Vienna demonstrated its tourist attraction in the first half of 2015 with an increase of 5.4% to some 6,330,000 visitor overnights," according to Norbert Kettner, the Vienna Tourist Board's Director. Vienna's ten top markets in the first half of 2015 were Germany with 1,283,000 bednights (+6% on the same period the previous year), followed by Austria (1,243,000, +7%), the USA (348,000, +9%), Italy (328,000, +13%), and the United Kingdom (237,000, +11%).

Places 6 to 10 were taken by Russia (217,000, -32%), Switzerland (209,000, +12%), France (165,000, -2%), Spain (156,000, +16%) and Japan (127,000, -2%). Vienna also reported particularly strong growth compared to 2014 from South Korea (86,000 overnights, +29%), Serbia (79,000, +25%), Turkey (71,000, +28%), India (40,000, +41%) and Taiwan (36,000, +57%). Despite the expansion of Vienna's hotel accommodation between June 2014 and June 2015 - an increase of 3,700 to 63,800 beds - room occupancy rose from 65% to 66% over the same period.

"International overnights account for more than 80% of Vienna's total volume of overnights. This not only reflects Vienna's continued attractiveness, but also shows that our systematic internationalization strategy of diversifying into many different markets is paying off," explains Kettner. His objective now is to increase Vienna's overnights to 18 million by the year 2020. Vienna has been equally successful as a congress metropolis: the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) ranked the Austrian capital in second place worldwide for its international congresses in 2014.