Experimental statistics
Overnight stays in hotels temporary estimate – ex
Experimental statistics on overnight stays in hotels discontinued
Statistics Iceland has decided to stop publishing preliminary figures on overnight stays in hotels as of July 2022.
Overnight stays in hotels
Summary
Statistics Iceland publishes statistics on overnight stays in hotels on a monthly basis, approximately 30 days after the end of each month, at which point data has been received from about 90% of hotels. Due to users' interest in getting information in a more timely manner, it was decided to use data from hotels that consistently submit immediately after the end of each month to get an initial assessment of each month's final numbers for bed occupancy rates and overnight stays in hotels.
Recently, the Icelandic tourism industry has gone through major changes in a short time. Such rapid changes underscore the need for timely statistics, but also pose problems for statistical processing. These preliminary estimates need to be interpreted with that in mind.
Description
About 20% of hotels consistently submit data in the first few days after the end of each month. A study was carried out to see whether this data was useful for an initial assessment of bed occupancy rates and the number of overnight stays in hotels. Since these hotels are not randomly selected, the data are broken down by region and weighted to correct for this non-random selection.
For this subset of hotels with consistently early returns, data on bed occupancy rates and the number of overnight stays spanning the last few years were compared to the final results for each month. It turned out that bed occupancy and the number of overnight stays in hotels could be estimated every month with a 95% confidence limit.
Objectives
This method makes it possible to estimate the bed occupancy and the number of overnight stays in hotels shortly after the end of each month, and the plan is to publish this plan within 10 days from the end of the month. It is our hope that this publication of more timely initial estimates will help indicate the latest developments in accommodation.
Around 169,000 overnight stays at hotels in January
Updated: 9 February 2022
Based on first reports on overnight stays in January, the preliminary estimate of overnight stays in hotels were 168,800 (95% confidence interval 157,700-179,900), thereof 32,400 Icelandic (95% CI 26,300-38,600) and 136,400 foreign overnight stays (95% CI 126,700-146,100).
In January 2021 there were 29,900 overnight stays and thereof about 80% by Icelanders. For further comparison there were 291,100 overnight stays at hotels in January 2020, thereof 260,700 by non-domestic tourists. Overnight stays in January 2022 were about 42% less than in January 2020.
Based on the same estimates, bed occupancy rates in January 2022 were approximately 24.5% (95% CI 22.8%-26.1%) compared with 7.5% in the same month last year and 41.4% in 2020. Bed occupancy rate is similar to January 2012 (23.8%).
The temporary estimate for overnight stays in December was 198,400 (95% Cl 186,000 – 210,700) and the final number of overnight stays was 202,600. In the same temporary estimate the bed occupancy rates were 28.2% (95% Cl 26.5%-30.0%). The final occupancy rate in that month was 27.0%.
Bed supply at hotels are currently going through a period of change in supply, leading to a considerable increase in uncertainty in the initial estimates of overnight stays. These figures should therefore be taken with extra caution until the final number of overnight stays in hotels is published.
Statistics
Temporary estimates of overnight stays in hotels 220209 (xlsx)
Metadata
Metadata for statistics on overnight stays: Accommodation, guests and overnight stays
Methodological description: Fast estimates of proportions and occupancy number of hotels (pdf)
For further information please contact gistiskyrslur@hagstofa.is, tel. +354 528 1000