Whether for work or holidays, Switzerland is always popular with local and foreign visitors, but last winter, its hotels recorded the highest-ever number of overnight stays. But which nationality visits the Alpine country most frequently?
Total visitor numbers were up 2.8 percent year on year, with 18.5 million overnight hotel stays recorded in the country – the largest number of stays ever seen during this period, according to the latest data from Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO).
After local Swiss visitors, Germans were the most common foreign visitors to Switzerland last winter, perhaps unsurprising given their geographical proximity and shared language with at least part of the country.
A total of 708,738 hotel registrations were made by German nationals between November 2024 and April 2025, an increase of 5.1 percent compared with the previous year, the FSO said.
Overall, foreign demand was up 5.5 percent from the previous winter at 9.2 million overnight hotel stays, the highest level since the 2007/2008 winter season.
Meanwhile, the number of stays by Swiss nationals rose to a new all-time record, edging 0.2 percent higher to 9.3 million.
The next most frequent visitors to Switzerland were the United States (522,134 hotel registrations). This was up 13.2 percent from the previous year, making Americans the biggest contributors to the large overall increase in the number of foreign visitors.
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Next came France (382,705 hotel registrations, up 6.4 percent), followed by the UK (323,748, up 0.9 increase) and Italy (236,795, a 2.6-percent increase).
China saw 155,223 hotel registrations, an increase of 1.8 percent, although the number of Chinese visitors was still well below pre-pandemic levels, the FSO said.
Rounding out the top ten was the Netherlands (114,095, 2.3 percent higher), Spain (112,232, up 5.4 percent) and the Gulf States (103,853, an increase of 3.7 percent).
But the people of Belarus and Iceland appear less keen on visiting Switzerland – they had the lowest number of hotel registrations, with fewer than 2,000 each.
