Figures from the accommodation statistics show that there were approximately 1.8 million notice the difference between “guest nights” and “guest”. One guest may have several guest nights at The numbers refer to hotels, short-term holiday dwellings, camping sites, and youth hostels in February. There were 853 000 more guest nights than in February last year, an increase of 92 per cent.

Norwegian guest nights increased by 57 per cent, while there were more than five times as many foreign guest nights. Despite the increase, three out of ten foreign overnight stays were still missing compared to February 2020.

After three months with decline in seasonally adjusted guest nights, there was an increase of 33 percent from January 2022 to February 2022.

Figure 1. Total guest nights by nationality. February 2017 to 2022

The Norwegian borders reopened in February, resulting in the highest number of foreign guest nights since September 2021. Adjusted for seasonal variations, the highest number of foreign guest nights since before the pandemic. Most foreign guest nights in February were from Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany. The number of Danish guest night was equal to the years before the pandemic. Number og guest night stays from other countries was still lower than before 2020.

Figure 2. Total guest night from the four countries with the most guest nights in February 2022. February 2019-2022

Sharp increase in hotel guest nights

In February, there were a total of 1.3 million guest nights stays in hotels, a doubling compared to February last year. 22 percent of hotel guest nights were foreign, approximately the same as before the pandemic. The share of foreign guest nights was 9 per cent in February 2021.

Number of guest nights at camping sites, holiday dwellings and youth hostels in February 2022 was higher that before the pandemic.

Seasonally adjusted figures for accommodation statistics were first introduced with the publication of the January 2022 statistics. Monthly time series are often characterized by considerable seasonal variations, which might complicate their interpretation. Seasonal adjustment removes the effects of these fluctuations, giving a clearer picture of the time series

The Norwegian government introduced actions against the spreading of the Corona-virus in Norway on Thursday 12th of March 2020. This has severely affected the accommodation industry and has led to a change in the the accommodation pattern since March 2020 compared to what we usually observe. The seasonal adjustment routine during the Corona- crisis is done in such a way that the figures from the start of and during the crisis (from March 2020), are not included in the calculation of the seasonal pattern. Technically, in the seasonal adjustment routine, this is done by specifying March and following months as outliers.

This means that the smoothed seasonally adjusted and seasonal adjusted figures will follow each other. One important exception is the last observation, where the smoothed adjusted figure is only a projected value and the last observation is therefore not included. The smoothed adjusted figures from March 2020 will therefore be difficult to interpret.

The seasonal adjustment routine of Statistics Norway is in line with the recommendations of Eurostat

In mid-February, the government removed all regulatory measures against covid-19, including a requirement of one meter distance and entry requirements, such as the obligation to register and a negative test before entering Norway. For more information, see the government’s webpage.

In accordance with Eurostat, quarantine hotels are not included in the accommodation statistics even when there is economic activity at the hotel. Quarantine guest nights cannot be assigned by purpose as holiday, occupation or course, conference. It was not possible to extract all quarantine guest nights and some stays at quarantine hotels are included in the statistics for February. Hotels that are exclusively quarantine hotels are not included in the statistics.