Overnight stays at hotels in Iceland in May were nearly 431,000 or approximately 9.8% more than in 2024 when they were roughly 392,000, according to preliminary data from Statistics Iceland. Overnight stays increased proportionally most in the West and Westfjords (31.6%) but also considerably in the Southwest (14.8%). Significant growth occurred in the Capital region were overnight stays increased by 8.9% while other regions experienced substantial changes, namely the South (7.2%), East (5.9%) and North (4.2%). Overall, overnight stays increased by roughly 17 thousand in the Capital region and nearly 22 thousand in other regions combined.
Foreign overnight stays in hotels were nearly 373,000, or 87% of total overnight hotel stays, which was a 9.6% increase from the previous year. Domestic stays increased by 11.4% from a year ago to total approximately 58,000. Nearly a third of all overnight stays belonged to citizens of the United States of America and in May those increased by 13.9% compared with the same month in 2024. In the first five months of the year, foreign overnight stays in hotels increased by a total of 3.5%. Domestic stays, however, declined modestly by 0.6% during the same months.
Overall supply of hotel bedrooms increased in all regions except in the East (-5.3%). For the whole country the total supply grew by 1.1% with the greatest increase occurring in the North (6.0%). In other regions there were smaller changes as supply of bedrooms increased by 1.3% in the South and 1.1% in the Southwest. In the Capital region and West and Westfjords the number of bedrooms grew minimally by 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively.
Occupancy rates of hotel rooms increased in all regions except the North (-0.3 percentage points) and by a total of 5.5 percentage points for the whole country. Rates increased most in the West and Westfjords, or by 14.9 percentage points, and significantly in the Southwest (10.9 percentage points). In the East there was 7.3 percentage point growth, 4.9 percentage point in the Capital region and 4.3 percentage points in the South.
All accommodations
When all accommodations are considered the total number of registered overnight stays in May were nearly 670,000. This was 9.6% higher than in May of 2024 when overnight stays were roughly 611.000. Most of overnight stays were registered in hotels and guesthouses or roughly 527,000 (430,800 in hotels and 96,600 in guesthouses). The rest, or approximately 142,000, was attributable to other types of accommodation (camping sites, cottages, etc.).
Revision of data categorisation by nationality
Data on overnight stays by nationality is currently undergoing revisions. While this analysis is in process limited amount on data by nationality will be published. As of this publication only data on hotel overnight stays includes categorisation by nationality. It should also be noted that all data is preliminary and can change in the coming monthly publications. Also, 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 on to already recorded nationalities.
Furthermore, data on overnight stays by nationality is used as input in estimating the number of unlisted overnight stays. For that reason, it is also not possible to publish results on the number of unlisted overnight stays for the month of May 2025.
About the data
All numbers for 2025 are preliminary except data on overnight stays at hotels which are preliminary for May 2025.