Statistics: Foreign tourism up 14 percent on year to March
Tourism in Estonia rose by 5 percent on year to March 2024, while in the case of foreign tourism alone, the increase stood at 14 percent, state agency Statistics Estonia reports.
Accommodation establishments served nearly 237,400 tourists, domestic and foreign, in March 2024.
The number of domestic tourists actually fell a little on year, while the number of foreign tourists rose, the agency says.
Commenting on the results, Helga Laurmaa, lead analyst at Statistics Estonia, said: "Compared with March 2023, there were 14 percent more foreign tourists, but their number was still 7 percent lower than in March 2019, ie. before the pandemic."
"The number of domestic tourists was 2 percent below last March's record," she added.
A total of 906 accommodation establishments served visitors in March, Laurmaa said.
"There were almost 21,000 rooms and 47,400 bed places available for guests. The room occupancy rate was 41 percent."
"The average cost of a guest night was €42 per person, which is one euro cheaper than in March 2023 but €6 more than in March 2019 before the crisis," she said, adding that the average cost of an overnight stay per person was €43 in Harju, Ida-Viru and Tartu counties and €39 in Pärnu County and on Saaremaa.
115,700 foreign and 121,700 domestic tourists were accommodated in Estonia in March, Laurmaa went on.
The majority of tourists preferred to stay overnight in Harju County (33 percent of the total), followed by Pärnu (14 percent) and Tartu (12 percent) counties.
Eleven percent stayed in Ida-Viru County.
Tourists spent a total of 435,900 nights at accommodation businesses, 202,700 nights in respect of domestic tourists and 233,200 nights for foreign tourists.
44,000 of foreign tourists were from Finland (up 11 percent on year), 25,100 from Latvia (a rise of 33 percent), over 4,800 people from Lithuania (21 percent up), 4,600 came from Germany (9 percent increase) and nearly 4,500 traveled from the U.K.
In comparison with March 2023, there were more accommodated tourists from many European countries as well as from countries further afield.
Compared with March of the previous year, the number of tourists arriving from Asian countries rose by 19 percent.
Seventy percent of the domestic tourists reported a holiday as their reason for travel, while 21 percent were on business.
Statistics Estonia collected and analyzed the above data on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.
More detailed data from Statistics Estonia is available here, here and here.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
