Good start to the tourist season on Lake Garda thanks to Easter

29 March 2024

After two years of restrictions, overnight tourists in both Italy and Veneto are returning to pre-pandemic numbers. The data record important occupancy percentages also for the Veronese Garda area during these holidays, with a peak for the Easter weekend. Also confirmed is the increasingly widespread tendency to under-date bookings, with an increase, however, in the average length of stay.

The numbers are from the research on the Easter period carried out by Federalberghi at national level thanks to Acs Marketing Solutions. A research that outlines the profile of the current traveller: attentive and aware of the value of Made in Italy and intent on making their holiday sustainable, not only in terms of costs and distances.
This Easter, this trend is shared above all by Italians. There are 12 million Italians travelling for these April holidays, 95.6% of whom will stay in the Belpaese. And the turnover is over 6 billion euros.

Even in Veneto, overnight tourists are returning to the numbers recorded in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year and a historic peak. According to the latest statistical report provided by the Region, Italian tourists are also surpassing the figures recorded pre-covid (+1.8%), but foreigners are also returning. Arrivals from European Union countries are also showing a positive sign compared to pre-covid times (+2.6% of presences compared to 2019), especially from Germany (+8.4%), Austrians (+6.7%), Dutch (+1.5%), Belgians (+0.9%).

In Veneto it is mainly the seaside and lake destinations that have returned to pre-covid tourist flows, with very good prospects for the summer and a tendency to lengthen the season. "At the local level, the predictions we had foreseen in recent weeks have come true," said Federalberghi Garda Veneto president Ivan De Beni. "There is no full house, but we are touching 90% occupancy, which could be exceeded with last minute bookings. We are very satisfied because we are finally and definitively reaching the occupancy levels we were used to in this period, also thanks to Vinitaly. On the whole, the season is looking good, even if definitive numbers will only be given later, but the approach is very good and the destination is enjoying success'.

The data of the Garda Veneto Observatory for the Easter period, based on a sample of about sixty facilities scattered along the entire shore of the lake, confirm the satisfaction of the category for the bookings recorded in this period (+10.5 percentage points compared to the same period last year), with a peak in occupancy for the Easter weekend. A general trend towards under-dated bookings for our destination is confirmed, which makes the scenarios still open to improvement. There is also a slight increase in duration average stay: 4.6 days compared to 4.4 in the previous year, a higher average compared to the national average for this Easter, which was 3.6 nights. Tourists from Germany are confirmed as the most important slice of Easter tourism in the Garda Veneto region (45.3%), followed by our compatriots (15.6%).




Article from VeronaSera of 29 March 2024