Overnight stays at hotels in Iceland in April were roughly 369,000, or approximately 11.3% more than in 2024 when they were nearly 332,000, according to preliminary data from Statistics Iceland. Overnight stays increased most in the North region (47.8%) but also significantly in the South (14.3%), West and Westfjords (14.1%) and the East (13.5%). Furthermore, there was a 7.4% increase in the Southwest and 5.6% in the Capital region. It is worth noting that the Easter holiday occurred in early April 2025 whereas it took place in March of 2024, thereby potentially influencing comparative results in April of 2025.
Foreign overnight stays in hotels were nearly 324,000, or 88% of total overnight hotel stays, which was a 17% increase from the previous year. Domestic stays were approximately 46,000 and decreased quite significantly year over year. Nearly one fourth of all overnight stays belonged to citizens of the United States of America and in April those increased by 5% compared with the same month in 2024. In the first quarter of 2025 the number of American overnight stays decreased by roughly 1% which was nonetheless significantly less than was recorded with other nationalities, for example the United Kingdom (-18%) and Germany (-14%). Overall, total foreign overnight stays in hotels decreased by 2% in the first quarter of 2025.
Overall supply of hotel bedrooms stayed unchanged in April compared with the same time in 2024. Nonetheless, there was a 23.8% decrease in the number of bedrooms in the East region and 7.8% decrease in the West and Westfjords. In addition, there was a moderate drop in the supply of hotel bedrooms in the Capital region of 1.2%. On the contrary, there was a significant increase in supplied hotel bedrooms in the North (9.2%) while the South and Southwest experienced increases of 3.7% and 5.8%, respectively.
Overall occupancy rate for the country increased, however, by 5.8 percentage points in April with increases occurring in all regions. Most notable was a 17.5 percentage points increase in the East region but significant growth was also present in the North (12.2 percentage points) and West and Westfjords (7.9 percentage points). Occupancy rates also increased by 6.1 percentage points in the South, 3.2 percentage points in the Capital region and 1.9 percentage points in the Southwest.
All accommodations
When all accommodations are considered the total number of registered overnight stays in April was nearly 548,000. This was 11.6% higher than in April of 2024 when overnight stays were nearly 491.000. Most of overnight stays were registered in hotels and guesthouses or nearly 423,000 (369,400 in hotels and 53,100 in guesthouses). The rest, or approximately 125,000, 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 of 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 April 2024.
About the data
All numbers for 2025 are preliminary except data on overnight stays at hotels which are preliminary for April 2025.