Figures from the accommodation statistics show that there were approximately 1.6 million notice the difference between “guest nights” and “guest”. One guest may have several guest nights. at Norwegian the numbers refer to hotels, short-term holiday dwellings, camping sites, and youth hostels. in May 2021, a 51.7 per cent increase compared to May last year. However, compared to the same period before the pandemic, May 2019, this represented a 42.8 per cent decline. Guest nights at hotels remained low this month, while camping sites became more popular with Norwegian travelers.

Figure 1. Total guest nights at commercial accommodation establishments for May

Source: Accommodation, Statistics Norway.

May record for Norwegians at camping sites

Guest nights at camping sites increased by 22 per cent in May this year compared to May 2020, driven by a record-high 631 000 guest nights by Norwegian tourists. Foreigners remained absent due to travel restrictions and Norwegians took advantage of the public holidays to extend their days camping.

Figure 2. Overnight stays at campsites for May

Source: Accomodation, Statistics Norway

Guest nights at hotels pick up

There were approximately 792 000 guest nights at Norwegian hotels in May 2021. This represents 344 000 more guest nights compared to May last year, but still 1.2 million fewer guest nights than in May 2019. The increase relative to 2020 applied to both Norwegian and foreign guest nights.

On 29 June, Eurostat published an article on short-stay accommodation offered via online collaborative economy platforms, with figures from AirBnB, Expedia, Booking.com and Tripadvisor. You can read more about this in an article here.

In order to limit import infection, the Government introduced a quarantine hotel scheme on 5 November 2020. Guidelines have changed several times. In May, all persons arriving in Norway had to undergo 10-day quarantine but there were changes to which groups were exempt and to the length of stay at quarantine hotels. For more information, see the governments’ webpage.

In accordance with Eurostat, quarantine hotels are not included in the accommodation statistics even when there is economic activity at the hotel. Quarantine guest nights cannot be assigned by purpose as holiday, occupation or course, conference. It was not possible to extract all quarantine guest nights and some stays at quarantine hotels are included in the statistics for May. Hotels that are exclusively quarantine hotels are not included in the statistics.