Austrian tourism industry records best summer season in over 20 years

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VIENNA—The 2015 summer season has been the best for the Austrian tourism industry in over two decades, Statistics Austria revealed in new figures Wednesday.

While the season is not officially over until the end of October, the statistics office said early conclusions can already be drawn, with the 62.48 million overnight stays recorded between May and September, an improvement over the same period in 2014 of 3.9 percent.

Not since the 1994 summer season, when 64.44 million overnight stays were recorded to September, has a better result been recorded.

The month of September proved particularly strong with a 4.5 percent year-on-year increase in overnight stays to 10.51 million.

Statistics also showed a continuing trend toward shorter overall stays, the increase in visitor numbers of 7.2 percent year-on-year to 19.26 million surpassing the already significant increase in overnight stays.

The 20 million visitor mark had previously only been surpassed in 2014, including the month of October.

Neighboring Germany has once again been the strongest source of tourists by some margin, making up 22.96 million of the overnight stays to September, followed by those from the Netherlands (2.55 million), Switzerland and Liechtenstein (2.18 million) and Italy (1.7 million).

The only negative blip on the records was a drop in overnight stays from Russian visitors of about 27 percent, or 320,00 overall stays.