published on 14 March showed that in general, the EU had recorded an average 27% increase in tourism in 2021 compared to the previous year. This activity is still 37% below 2019 levels, but shows an improvement in the leisure sector.
After the crisis-induced dip below 1.5bn nights spent in tourist accommodations in the EU in 2020, 1.8bn bookings were recorded for last year.
Southern European countries like Greece (88.7%) and Spain (78.9%) recorded the highest increase, whereas Latvia (-17.6%) and Slovakia (-16.1%) had the hardest time recovering from the pandemic. Luxembourg, with a 40.9% decrease compared to 2019 was among the slower countries to recover and scored below the EU average (27.3%).
Several factors can be pointed out, such as remote working--which reduced the number of business travellers to Luxembourg--and the continuation of sanitary restrictions for much of last year.
The grand duchy, alongside Croatia, with a drop of less than 45%, was the least affected by the decrease in non-resident guests.
Delano has reached out to Luxembourg For Tourism and is awaiting a response.