Stats: Number of Hotel and Guest-house Visitors Down 1.2 percent Y-o-Y in July

Bratislava, 11 September (TASR) - The number of people staying in tourist accommodation facilities in Slovakia fell by 1.2 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) to 667,000 in July, the Statistics Office reported on Thursday. Slovak hotels, guest houses and other accommodation facilities lacked 6.4 percent (or 45,000 tourists) to match the record set in the pre-pandemic month of July 2019. Guests spent less than 2 million nights in hotels and guest houses in July, down 1.6 percent from the year before, with the average length of stay equalling 3 nights. Domestic clientele made up almost two thirds of all visitors, with their number going down by 3 percent to 399,000 in July. The figure was almost 4 percent lower than the one seen the pre-pandemic month of July 2019. Meanwhile, the number of foreign visitors went up almost by 2 percent y-o-y to 268,000. However, it was still almost 10 percent below the record set in July 2019. The most-frequently visited regions in June were Zilina and Bratislava regions, with more than 140,000 guests, followed by Presov region with over 118,000 visitors. These three regions together accounted for more than 61 percent of total visitor numbers in Slovakia. Five out of the eight Slovak regions reported a worse first holiday month than in 2024, with a decrease in visitor numbers ranging from 0.1 percent in Bratislava region to 12.3 percent in Nitra region. In the seventh month of this year, all regions of Slovakia posted fewer visitors than before the pandemic (in July 2019). In the first seven months of this year, almost 3.5 million guests used the services of accommodation facilities in Slovakia, up 5.4 percent y-o-y. The figure was just 2.1 percent (76,000 guests) lower than in the pre-pandemic first seven months of 2019. ko