Stats: Number of Hotel and Guest-house Visitors Up 6 percent Y-o-Y in February

Bratislava, April 11 (TASR) - The number of people staying in tourist accommodation facilities in Slovakia rose by 6 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) to over 450,000 in February, the Statistics Office reported on Friday, adding that this was the most successful February since the pandemic. However, Slovak hotels, guest houses and other accommodation facilities still lacked almost 7 percent to match the record set in the pre-pandemic month of February 2020. Guests spent over 1.2 million nights in hotels and guest houses in February, up 8.1 percent from the year before, with the average length of stay equalling 2.7 nights. Domestic clientele made up almost two thirds of all visitors, with their number going up by more than 5 percent to 281,000 in February. However, the figure was still 11 percent below the figure for the pre-pandemic month of February 2020. The number of foreign visitors went up by 8 percent y-o-y to 169,000. This figure exceeded the record set in February 2020 by over 2 percent. The most-frequently visited regions in February were those with good conditions for winter tourism and skiing. Zilina region came top with 135,000 guests, followed by Presov region with 95,000. These two regions together accounted for more than half of the total visitor numbers in Slovakia. Both were popular mainly among domestic visitors, reporting some 70,000 each. They only differed in the number of accommodated foreigners, with Presov region seeing significantly fewer of them. Bratislava region was the third most popular region with a 17-percent share of the total number of tourists accommodated in Slovakia in February, when more than 76,000 tourists used its accommodation facilities. It was the only region in which the vast majority of visitors were foreign guests. ko/df