Tourist spending in Switzerland grew in 2024

Tourists in Switzerland spent more last year. Keystone-SDA

Visitors to Switzerland spent CHF19.6 billion ($23.9 billion) last year, a 2.2% rise compared to the previous year, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) said on Monday.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Meanwhile, spending by Swiss visitors abroad rose by even more (7.8%) to CHF18.9 billion.

The so-called “tourism balance” of expenditure remains positive CHF720 million, the FSO notes, but the surplus has decreased significantly. It stood at CHF1.7 billion the previous year.

Higher guest numbers

The growth in spending by foreign tourists in Switzerland is explained by the rising number of guests last year. There was a notable increase in overnight stays in hotels and apartments (+3.8%).

Income from study and hospital stays also increased (+3.0%), according to the FSO. But spending by day visitors to Switzerland declined slightly.

For Swiss visitors abroad, the amount spent during short trips with overnight stays increased (+7.2%). Spending by day visitors, such as shopping tourists, rose by 9.4%.

This data remains provisional. For the previous year, the definitive data on spending by Swiss nationals abroad differed significantly from the provisional figures. According to the FSO, this was primarily due to a major revision of data the household budget survey, on the basis of which expenditure on foreign travel is calculated.

What is your opinion? Join the debate:

Translated from German with DeepL/sb

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].