Overnight stays at hotels in Iceland in December were nearly 274,000 or approximately 7,0% fewer than in 2025 when they were nearly 294,000, according to preliminary data from Statistics Iceland. The decrease was primarily due to 10.8% (20,500) fall in the number of overnight stays in the Capital region. In the East region overnight stays fell by 29.7% and by 18.3% in the West and Westfjords while modest increases were in the South (1.2%) and Southwest (2.0%). Lastly, overnight stays increased by 10.3% in the North.
Foreign overnight stays in hotels were approximately 245,000, or 90% of total overnight hotel stays, which was a 4.3% decrease from the previous year. Domestic stays decreased by 25.1% from a year ago to total roughly 28,000. Most of all overnight stays belonged to citizens of the United Kingdom (62 thousand) and in January those decreased by 1.1% compared with the same month in 2025. Overnight stays by other nationalities also declined, with the USA (49 thousand) falling by 21.8% and Chinese overnight stays (25 thousand) by 9.1%.
Overall supply of hotel bedrooms increased by 1.0% in the country in January. The greatest increase was in the East (23.9%) and South (14.0%). However, in other regions there were declines with 13.2% drop in the North, 5.1% in the Southwest and 2.0% in the Capital region. The number of hotel bedrooms was nearly unchanged in the West and Westfjords (-0.1%). In total, there were 165 hotels operating in January 2026 with a total of 11,599 rooms which was a moderate increase from a year ago when there were 161 hotels operating in the country. A total of 57 hotels operated in the Capital region in January with a total of 5.442 rooms and 50 in the South with 3.026 rooms.
Occupancy rates of hotel rooms decreased by a total of 4.1 percentage points for the whole country. Rates decreased most in the East region (-6.5 percentage points) and the Capital region (-6.1 percentage points). Considerable decreases were also in the South (-4.9 percentage points) and West and Westfjords (3.7 percentage points). On the other hand, occupancy rates increased by 3.5 percentage points in the Southwest and 3.3 percentage points in the North. In January the highest occupancy rates were in the Capital region (56.1%) and the Southwest (49.9%).
All accommodations
When all accommodations are considered the total number of registered overnight stays in January were roughly 359,000. This was 10,4% lower than in January of 2025 when overnight stays were nearly 401,000. Most of overnight stays were registered in hotels and guesthouses or 295,000 (274,000 in hotels and 21,000 in guesthouses). The rest, or approximately 65,000, was attributable to other types of accommodation (camping sites, cottages, etc.).
About the data
All numbers for 2025 and 2026 are preliminary except data on overnight stays at hotels which are preliminary for January 2026.
Data registered from accommodations can include number of overnight stays that are not attributable to any nationality. In such cases, the data is distributed proportionally onto already recorded nationalities.