The number of people staying in hotels, hostels, guest houses and other accommodation businesses in June was around a third higher than the figure for June 2020, state agency Statistics Estonia reporeds. However, the sector still has a long way to go before pre-pandemic levels are reached, and room occupancy stood at just over 30%, while the sector was largely used by the burgeoning domestic tourist demographic.
Accommodation businesses serviced 216,000 tourists, domestic and foreign, in June, Statistics Estonia reported.
While the rise suggests recovery from the pandemic and during a month when the bulk of the previous government restrictions were lifted, Statistics Estonia analyst Helga Laurmaa said that the coronavirus continued to make its effects known, particularly when looking at the bigger picture in relation to the last full pre-pandemic year of 2019.
She said: “The number of accommodated tourists increased compared to June 2020, but was still almost two times smaller than in 2019.”
The majority of tourists were still from inside Estonia, the agency added – of 384,000 nights spent in accommodation establishments in June, 312,000 of them were taken by domestic tourists and 72,000 by foreign tourists.
The number of businesses open also fell, by 3% YoY in June and by 15% compared with June 2019, to 1,168 accommodation establishments.
22,000 rooms were available comprising 53,000 bed places. Only 31% of these were taken up, however.
The average room price was EUR 33 per guest in June, Statistics Estonia said, a rise of EUR 3 YoY. Parnu County at EUR 36 per night, and Harju and Tartu counties, plus Saaremaa, were slightly more expensive than average at EUR 35 per night.
184,500 domestic tourists (spending 312,000 nights as noted above) were on vacation in their home country in June, a rise of 52% YoY and 21% more than in June 2019.
Conversely, foreign tourists number 31,700, down by 24% and by 88% respectively.
Foreign tourists represented just 15% of the guests serviced by accommodation establishments, compared with 63% and 255,000 in June 2019.
Those foreign tourists who did arrive in Estonia were overwhelmingly from the immediately neighboring countries – Finland (around 8,000), Latvia (around 5,000), Lithuania (circa 1,900) and Russia (1,600), while around 1,7000 tourists in June were from Germany.
Harju County (meaning Tallinn) along with Parnu County – Parnu city being Estonia’s summer capital – and Tartu County, hosted most of these visitors. (ERR/Business World Magazine)