Accomodation
31. Jan 2024
2023: Hotel stays dip, occupancy unchanged
Hotel overnight stays are used as a measurement of the number of visitors and the duration of their stays. For example, if one person spends three nights or three people spend one night, both cases add up to three overnight stays.
There were just over 222,000 overnight stays in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of about 9,000. The number of check-ins, on the other hand, increased by about 200 to just over 92,000 in 2023.
Put another way, the number of hotel guests increased, but the average number of nights spent per person went down. The average number of overnight stays per person was 2.4 in 2023, compared to 2.5 in 2022.
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Occupancy rate largely unchanged
The occupancy rate shows the number of available hotel rooms used.
The annual occupancy rate for 2023 was 52%, slightly down from the 2022 figure of 53%. The highest annual occupancy rate was registered in 2019 when it reached 61%.
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Biggest decline in the capital region
Almost 204,000 overnight stays were registered in hotels in the capital region in 2023, about 3,000 fewer than in 2022. About 18,000 stays were registered outside of the capital region in 2023, which is about 6,000 fewer than in 2022. This is the lowest figure on record, with the exception of the pandemic period of 2020-2021.
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Record-high number of hotel guests from outside Faroes and Denmark
The number of overnight stays by residents outside of the Faroes and Denmark hit an all-time high in 2023. This group accounted for almost 98,000 stays in 2023, up by 4,000 (5%) compared to 2022.
Danish residents accounted for some 65,500 overnight stays, a 25% drop from the all-time high figure of 88,000 Danish hotel guests in 2022.
The number of Faroese hotel guests increased by 18% year-on-year, reaching 58,000 in 2023.
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(In September 2023, Statistics Faroe Islands paused hotel statistics reporting after detecting inaccuracies in the figures. After a thorough investigation and rectification, reliable monthly hotel statistics are once again available.)
Definitions
Overnight stay: in this context, an overnight stay is defined as a single night spent in a hotel which registers and passes this information on to Statistics Faroe Islands. For example, if ten people spend three nights at a hotel, this counts as 30 overnight stays.
Check-in: the number of individuals who check in at a hotel.
Room nights: the number of rooms occupied over a certain period. For example, if ten people spend three nights in five rooms, this counts as 15 room nights.