The visits, and accommodation of Chinese tourists at Norwegian hotels increased by nearly 40% last year. No other country can compete with the Chinese in terms of sheer numbers in the tourist industry.
Last year, the Chinese increased overnight stays alone by 103,000, which is about 38%. Chinese tourists showed their biggest increase in the number of overnight stays, compared to the previous year, according to Statistics Norway (SSB).
The figures apply to the whole of last year, and thus have little to do with the peak just before Christmas after the process of normalisation of relations between China and Norway was complete.
Norwegian overnight stays rose, in the same period, by 2%, to 16 million.
Overall, there was an increase from 2015 of 4% in the number of overnight stays. We wait to see whether there have been enough records broken, say Statistics Norway.
Hotels accounted for 22.6 million overnight stays, while campsites, holiday villages and hostels had over 11 million last year.
The sharp increase in the number of overnight stays by Chinese tourists in Norway, coincides with developments that the Utlendingsdirektoratet (UDI) has registered in recent years.
Chinese tourists dominated the stack of applications for guest visas, and were also greatest among those who had the highest number of permits granted in recent years.
It is expected that the influx of Chinese tourists will continue to increase, given that the difficulties of Norway’s relationship with China are now over.
The number of all foreigners taking overnight stays increased by 10% last year, compared with 2015, and amounted to 6.6 million.
Swedes make up the largest foreign guest group at Norwegian hotels, followed by Germans and Britons.
Hotels had a turnover of 13.7 billion last year, up 4% from 13.2 billion the previous year.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
