Fewer people spend the night at Swiss hotels
The Swiss hotel industry welcomed fewer guests in March, with 3.1 million overnight stays - a 14 per cent drop compared with the same period last year.
The Federal Statistics Office reported on Thursday that a reason behind the March decline could be that the Easter travel season came in April this year.
Swiss hoteliers hosted proportionately fewer foreign guests in March than Swiss ones. Foreign travellers accounted for 1.8 million overnight stays, a drop of 411,000 or 19 per cent compared with this time last year.
Swiss travellers accounted for 1.3 million overnight stays, 82,000 fewer than in March 2008, a decrease of 5.9 per cent.
Total overnight stays for the first three months of 2009 also show a decline, statistics show. From January until March, hotels welcomed 9.2 million guests, a decline of 9.6 per cent over the first months of 2008.
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