The sunny weather of the past few days made for a busy weekend at the seaside. The coastal resorts of West Flanders have recorded no fewer than 1 million overnight stays during the long weekend. However, the number of day trippers has been lower than during the long August holiday weekend last year. The figures on the number of tourists at the Flemish coast come from the West Flemish tourist board Westtoer.
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Fine weather provides a boost to tourism at our coastal resorts
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After period of wet and cool weather something resembling summer returned at the end of last week. This was good news for tourism at the coastal resorts of West Flanders. The number of overnight stays during the long week is estimated to have been just over a million. This is approximately equal to the number of overnight stays at the Flemish coast during the same period last year. Saturday night was particularly busy for hotels at the coast with 275,000 overnight stays.
The hotels at the coast recorded an average occupancy during the long weekend of 90% with a peak of 95% on Saturday night. Foreign tourists accounted for 30% of hotel room occupancy. The lion’s share of foreign holidaymakers came from The Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg. Tourists from Wallonia and Brussels account for 26% of overnight stays.
Busy at self-catering accommodation and campsites too
Westtoer says that it has also been a busy weekend at campsites and self-catering holiday lets during the long weekend. Furthermore, those with second homes at the coast have flocked there in their droves too.
It is not all good news though as the number of day trippers that spend a day at one of our coastal resorts was down during this year’s long August holiday weekend compared with the holiday weekend in 2022. In total, around 480,000 people went on a daytrip to the seaside. This is 25% down on the August holiday weekend last year.