Booking, Airbnb, Expedia and Tripadvisor increase the number of hotel bookings in Latvia by 52% in 2022
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In 2022, 1.1 million hotel stays were booked on one of four digital platforms - Booking, Airbnb, Expedia and Tripadvisor - in Latvia, according to the latest data from a collaboration project between the Central Statistical Office (CSO) and Eurostat, the European statistical office.
This is 52.1% more than in 2021, when the number of bookings reached 700.9 thousand, and 20.3% less than in 2019, before the pandemic, when the number of bookings reached 1.3 million nights.
The data provide information on bookings made on four digital platforms - Booking, Airbnb, Expedia and Tripadvisor - for short-term accommodation such as guest flats, apartments, holiday homes, chalets, cottages and similar accommodation, excluding hotels and similar accommodation and campsites. The data show the impact of Covid-19 with a sharp drop in March, April, year-end 2020 and early 2021, but an overall increase in booked nights already in early 2022 and the season. Also in February, the CSP data on the performance of Latvian hotels and other tourist accommodation in 2022 showed an increase of 63.2% in guest nights compared to the previous year (2).
In 2022, the share of nights booked by foreign guests increased again, with 72.9% of hotel nights booked, while domestic guests booked 27.1% of nights. In comparison, in 2021, half (50.5%) of hotel nights were booked by domestic guests and half (49.5%) by foreign guests, while in pre-pandemic 2019, foreign guests booked 87.4% of all nights.
The average booking per stay at these properties in 2022 was 7 nights, including 8.7 nights for foreign guests and 4.6 nights for domestic guests. The average number of bookings represents the volume of bookings per stay and is obtained by dividing the total number of bookings by the number of bookings. The majority of bookings are for up to 10 beds (92.4% of booked nights).
Comparing the three Baltic States, Lithuania had the highest number of booked nights in 2022 with 1.4 million nights, followed by Estonia (1.2 million nights) and Latvia (1.1 million nights). However, Latvia had the highest number of foreign guests - 777.5 thousand.
The number of overnight stays by foreign guests was 777 (2.2 times more than in the previous year). Estonia booked 730.2 thousand overnight stays. In Estonia, the number of nights stayed by foreign guests was 730,000 (an increase of 97.9%), while in Lithuania - 720,000.
In Lithuania, the number of foreign guest nights was 720 (an increase of 85.5%). All three Baltic countries saw a decrease in the number of domestic guest nights in 2022 compared to the previous year - Latvia by 18.4%, Estonia by 7.5% and Lithuania by 5.4%.
In 2022, 54.4% of all hotel nights were spent in Riga, 20.2% in Kurzeme, 16.2% in Pierīga, 4.7% in Vidzeme, 2.9% in Latgale and 1.5% in Zemgale. The largest share of Latvian residents stayed in Kurzeme (35.2% of hotel rooms) and Riga (27.4% of hotel rooms). Foreign guests stayed most in Riga (64.5% of the rooms), Pierīga (15.5% of the rooms) and Kurzeme (14.6% of the rooms).
Available data for the six largest Latvian cities by population - Riga, Daugavpils, Liepaja, Jelgava, Jurmala and Ventspils - show that in 2022, the number of hotels in Latvia will increase by 6.5%. In all of these cities, the number of hotel nights booked by foreign guests has increased in 2022 compared to the previous year (the highest increase in Riga - 2.7 times and in Daugavpils - 2.4 times), while the number of nights booked by domestic guests has decreased (the highest decrease in Jurmala - 40.5% and in Ventspils - 25.7%).
In 2022, the busiest months were July and August, when the share of bookings reached 37.5%, while January and February were the lowest, accounting for only 7.3% of total bookings.
The largest numbers of foreign visitors to Latvia were from Lithuania (62.6 thousand), Germany (48.7 thousand), the United Kingdom (36.8 thousand), France (25.1 thousand), Estonia (15.7 thousand), the USA (13.9 thousand), Russia (13.8 thousand), Poland (11.9 thousand) and Spain (11.2 thousand).
Of these four platforms, Booking has the largest number of properties available in Latvia, with around 2.7 thousand available in June 2022 (3). The number of accommodation types (apartments, guesthouses, holiday homes, cottages, youth hostels, etc.) available on Booking is around 21,000. (4). Approximately 54 % of the accommodation is apartments.
Data on booked hostels at regional and city level in the countries of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association for the period 2018-2022 and more information on the project are available on the Eurostat website under "Experimental Statistics".
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