NEWS | Wednesday, 26 March 2008

Hotel bed nights register January increase

Average number of nights per tourist drop slightly

The Tourism Statistics Unit at the NSO Friday concluded a report on occupancy rates in establishments licensed by the MTA to provide lodging, recording an eight percent increase of nights spent in January of this year over the corresponding month in 2007.
In January 2008 total nights spent in collective accommodation establishments added up to a total of 379,041, the report said.
Over the 12 months between January 2007 and January 2008, a decrease of 1.2 nights in the average number of nights spent per tourist was also registered.
Accounting for 95.5 percent of the national bed-stock, the over-all supply of bed-places in January on mainland Malta stood at 36,195 beds, implying a decrease of 1.7 percent when compared to the same month in 2007.
On an annual basis, the net use of bed-places on the island went up by 1.4 percentage points to 35.5 percent.
Nights spent by non-residents accounted for 95.4 per cent of total guest-nights in Malta.
In Gozo and Comino, the overall supply of bed-places stood at 1,715 beds, an increase of 5.2 percent over the comparable month a year earlier.
The net use of bed-places in January was 17.4 percent, an increase of 3.7 percentage points over the same month in 2007.
The average length of stay stood at 2.6 nights, an increase of 0.1 nights. Nights spent by non-residents accounted for 58.4 per cent of total guest-nights in Gozo.