HESTA (Swiss accommodation statistics)

HESTA is the survey run by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (BFS/OFS) that collects national accommodation statistics — arrivals, overnight stays and guest origin — from hosts. Qualifying accommodation providers are legally required to report their figures periodically, and the aggregated data feeds official tourism statistics. In practice this means capturing each guest’s details and length of stay accurately and submitting a return in the format the office expects. Done by hand at the end of a busy period, it is tedious and easy to get wrong. For campgrounds, HESTA reporting overlaps with the data already gathered for guest registration and tourist tax, so systems that record guest information once at booking or check-in can generate the HESTA export automatically rather than forcing staff to re-tally arrivals and nights. It is one of several Swiss-specific obligations — alongside tourist tax and nDSG data protection — that campsite software in Switzerland is expected to handle.