Analysis: Last year's decline of tourism worst for Bratislava hotels

Growth in domestic tourism at least partly compensated for the decreased number of foreign tourists staying in Slovak accommodation during the pandemic. However, according to data from the Slovak Statistical Office, this did not fully offset the loss and the number of overnight stays fell across the Slovak regions. It was the hotels and tourist accommodations of Bratislava that experienced the largest decline in their number of customers, as is shown by an analysis from the UniCredit Bank of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. According to the analysis, the number of overnight stays in Bratislava fell by about 65 % compared to the previous five years, and by 68 % compared to the record year 2019. Fewer visitors stayed in Bratislava hotels than for at least 20 years. The analysis also shows that the reasons for the strong decline in visits to Bratislava should be sought mainly in the structure of the visitors. "We suppose that foreigners and people travelling for work make up a larger proportion of the visitors in Bratislava than in other regions of Slovakia. These were precisely the groups that decreased most during the pandemic," wrote the analysts.