Overnight stays at hotels in Iceland in October were roughly 513,800 or approximately 4.1% more than in 2023 when they were 493,800. Overnight stays increased in all regions except in the Southern peninsula (-9.8%) and the East region where the decrease was 17.3%. Minor changes were also in the Capital region where the increase was only 0.5%. The greatest increase was in the South region (17.0%) and the West and Westfjords regions (13.7%) while the North region also experienced growth of 6.4% in October.
Supply of hotel bedrooms increased by 2.3% in October compared with the same time in 2023. The greatest increase was in the South region where the supply grew by approximately 9.9%. In the West and Westfjords regions there was also very significant growth of 7.3%. Overall occupancy rates also increased in all regions except in the Southwest (-9.4 percentage points) and the East region (-9.2 percentage points). In total, occupancy rates increased by 1.6 percentage points with the greatest increase occurring in the North and South regions by 4.2 and 5.8 percentage points, respectively.
All accommodations
When all accommodations were considered the total number of registered overnight stays in October were nearly 779,000. This was an increase of 2.3% compared with the same month in 2023 when the total was 762,000. The majority of overnight stays was registered in hotels and guesthouses or roughly 609,000 (514,000 in hotels and 95,000 in guesthouses). The rest, or 170,000, was attributable to other types of accommodation (camping sites, cottages, etc.).
Revision of data categorization by nationality
Data on overnight stays by nationality is currently undergoing revisions due to the possibility of domestic overnight stays being overestimated and foreign stays underestimated since the year 2021. While this analysis is in process no data on the number of overnight stays by nationality will be published. Readers should note, however, that this revision does not affect the total number of overnight stays (by type of accommodation or region) but rather only the breakdown by nationality.
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 October 2024.
About the data
All numbers for 2024 are preliminary except data on overnight stays at hotels which are preliminary for October 2024.