Where to go: Austria′s most Visited Places

Without much doubt, the usual suspects of sightseeing spots in Austria are Vienna and Salzburg, followed by Tyrol and the Salzkammergut. Other hot-spots for international visitors are the lakes of Carinthia - and obviously the skiing areas of Vorarlberg, Tyrol and southern Salzburg for winter tourism. Now, being a nerdy person myself with interests in biology, history and literature and fine arts, I used to focus very much on urban tourism in Austria as well as "conventional" sightseeing.

Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague of mine, whose parents own a hotel. He pointed out to me that his hometown was among the top-ten tourist destinations in Austria - to my great surprise. This was simply because it is in the middle of a very popular skiing area; a no-skier like me misses out on this important aspect of the Austrian tourism industry. Therefore, TourMyCountry.com has a few significant gaps.

This made me look up a ranking of the numbers of booking arrangements (total number of nights spent in a place by a tourist) and there were even more surprises to come. The ranking was published by the "Statistik Austria" (Austrian Institute of Statistics, a governmental organisation) and thus I regard it as a rather reliable piece of information.

A fair number of the apparent top-10 paces to go in Austria were towns I didn′t know. Usually skiing destinations or hiking hot-beds. Unsurprisingly, winter and summer seasons show quite different results. The data was collected in 2006, but variations are small and thus representative for other years. Here they are:

Summer Tourism: Where to go

Numbers in Thousands (eg. 720 is 720,000 overnight stays by visitors)

Winter Tourism: Where to go

Numbers in Thousands (eg. 720 is 720,000 overnight stays by visitors)

Further Reading

Places to go: Top-111 Sightseeing Attractions

Vienna's Most-visited Attractions

Statistik Austria: Federal Bureau of Statistics

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