Hospitality sector makes best year on record with recovery in air travel lagging behind

January 26 2022: A total of more than 239,000 travelers passed through Vagar Airport last year, an increase by one-third on 2020, when tourism was hard hit by the global health crisis.

According to news daily Portal.fo, the number of air travelers to the Faroe Islands in 2021 had largely not recovered beyond 2013-equivalent figures, which came to a total 236,000. Since then the number of passengers kept increasing year on year — until 2020, that is, when the entire tourism industry suffered a major setback.

The best year on record so far thus remains 2019, with over 424,000 travelers passing through the terminals of Vagar Airport.

That year likewise was the best on record as far as concerns booked overnight stays at Faroese hotels — with a total of just under 25,000. However, 2021 turned out to be a great one for the hospitality business, according to newly released figures from Statistics Faroe Islands. So much so, according to a newly released report, that the hotels managed to beat the record from 2019. As it turns out, the total number of overnight stays booked at Faroese hotels in 2021 amounted to just under 174,000, almost 5,000 over the previous record from two years earlier.

Text by Alda Nielsdóttir. The original article can be found at the Local.fo website.