Three Times as Many Tourists as Last Year

 Nearly three times as many foreign tourists visited Iceland via Keflavík International Airport in the summer, compared with the summer of 2020, or about 304,000, Morgunblaðið reports.

Most of them came from the US (43 percent), followed by Germany (9 percent), Poland (7 percent), the UK and France (5 percent each).

Most of the people came on vacation (90 percent), 4 percent came to visit friends or family, and 2 percent came for reasons of health, to study, or for other reasons.

The average time spent in Iceland was 9.1 overnight stays. Germans, on average, stayed the longest, or 11 nights, and Brits the shortest, or 7.8 nights. The average time spent by Americans was 8.1 overnight stays.

The number of foreign tourist departures in the summer of last year were just over 115,000, compared with about 304,000 the past summer. By comparison, they were about 678,000 in 2019, nearly 804,000 in 2018, and close to 778,000 in 2017.

Nearly two out of every five overnight stays during the past summer were spent  at hotels, according to Statistics Iceland, 17 percent at guesthouses, and nearly 50 percent in other types of accommodation.

The total number of overnight stays was nearly 2.7 million in the summer, or 58 percent more than in the summer of 2020, and about a quarter fewer than in the summer of 2019.

The occupancy rate for hotels in the summer was the highest in August, or 76 percent, and the highest in East Iceland, where it was 83 percent.