Overnight stays at hotels in Iceland in November were roughly 365,000 or approximately 6.6% fewer than in 2024 when they were nearly 391,000, according to preliminary data from Statistics Iceland. Overnight stays decreased in all regions and proportionally most in the East region, or by 31.1%. Significant decrease was also in the Capital region (-8.9%), West and Westfjords (-7.9%) and North (-7.1%). In the South region overnight stays decreased by 1.1% and by 0.9% in the Southwest. Overall, overnight stays decreased by roughly 20 thousand in the Capital region and approximately 5,500 in other regions combined.
Foreign overnight stays in hotels were approximately 315,000, or 86% of total overnight hotel stays, which was a 2.9% decrease from the previous year. Domestic stays decreased by 24.5% from a year ago to total nearly 50,000. Most of all overnight stays belonged to citizens of the United States of America and in November those decreased by 19.5% compared with the same month in 2024. Overnight stays by other nationalities varied, with the United Kingdom falling by 7.4% but continued growth was from Asian nationalities, primarily China from which overnight stays increased by 60.3%. In the first eleven months of the year foreign overnight stays in hotels increased by a total of 10.0%. Domestic stays, however, declined by 27.8% during the same months.
Overall supply of hotel bedrooms increased by 3.1% in the country in November. The greatest increase was in the South (12.1%) while smaller growth was in the West and Westfjords region (3.4%) and North (2.6%). No changes were in the East and minimal increase in the Capital region (0.3%). However, in the Southwest the number of hotel bedrooms declined by 6.0%. In total, there were 173 hotels operating in November 2025 with a total of 12,115 rooms which was a moderate increase from a year ago when there were 169 hotels operating in the country. A total of 58 hotels operated in the Capital region in November with a total of 5.555 rooms and 53 in the South with 3.163 rooms.
Occupancy rates of hotel rooms decreased by a total of 5.0 percentage points for the whole country. Rates decreased most in the East (12.5 percentage points) and the Capital region (6.1 percentage points). Considerable declines were also in the South (5.9 percentage points) and the West and Westfjords region (4.2 percentage points). Rates decreased also by 2.3 percentage points in the North but increased by 4.1 percentage points in the Southwest. In November the highest occupancy rates were in the Capital region (69.4%) and the Southwest (63.8%).
All accommodations
When all accommodations are considered the total number of registered overnight stays in November were nearly 502,000. This was 6,8% lower than in November of 2024 when overnight stays were roughly 538,000. Most of overnight stays were registered in hotels and guesthouses or 418,000 (365,000 in hotels and 53,000 in guesthouses). The rest, or approximately 84,000, was attributable to other types of accommodation (camping sites, cottages, etc.). In the first eleven months of the year accumulated overnight stays totalled 9,762,000 which was 10.1% more than during the same period in 2024.
Revision of data categorisation by nationality
Revisions of data on overnight stays by nationality have now been finalised and all data updated accordingly.
In the years 2020 to 2024 Icelandic overnight stays were overestimated and foreign overnight stays underestimated as significant proportion of accommodations wrongly reported information on the nationalities of visitors. For that reason, data for those years had to be reevaluated with considerable changes from previously published data. Larger proportion of data in those years is estimated relative to other years and is subject to change as new information may become available.
It should be noted that all estimated numbers on overnight stays for the years in question and 2025 are preliminary and can change from month to month. 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.
About the data
All numbers for 2025 are preliminary except data on overnight stays at hotels which are preliminary for November 2025.