Any Resident passing through Casino Square in recent days cannot help but notice the hordes of tourists in numbers never seen before.
No doubt this is a great relief for the hotels and restaurants that depend largely on the summer tourist trade.
Now the figures confirm that the last pre-coronavirus year, 2019, is being surpassed by a large margin.
July’s room occupancy in Monaco’s three, four, and five-star hotels was 76 percent, ten points up on 2021. The occupancy rate hit 79 percent three years ago, but the room rate has jumped from an average of 472 euros to 630, according to Sandrine Camia, deputy director of the Tourism and Conventions Office.
In terms of receipts the change from 2019 to 2022 for the month of July is +29 percent.
Americans are the main source of income, and with 17 weekly flights from New York to Nice and no pandemic barriers, these big spenders are back in force.
Also very apparent are visitors from the Middle East, which suggests that Monaco’s successful exposure at the World Expo in Dubai may have played a major role.
Other long distance visitors that are well-resented are Australians, Mexicans and Brazilians. Unsurprisingly, Russian visitor numbers have fallen by 70 percent.
Ms Camia also credits the fact that Monaco has a great range of cultural attractions this year, including the reopened Prince’s Palace, the Louboutin expo at the Grimaldi Forum, Helmut Newton at Villa Sauber and the perennial Oceanographic Museum, which has seen a recovery in visitor numbers up by 60 percent, back to the 93,000 of July 2019.
In the meantime, the line at the old Cafe de Paris gets longer every day.
PHOTO: Nighttime on Casino Square Max Brodie
