The latest INE accommodation data shows where visitor spending stays, and what October’s peak-season evidence must test.
Mozambique’s hotels and lodges received 2,133,138 guests in 2025 and logged 5,571,933 overnight stays, according to Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE) figures reported by Lusa at the end of September 2026. Divide the second number by the first and the sector averages 2.6 nights per guest. The provinces are far from that average: Inhambane held its guests for 6.6 nights, Maputo city for 1.1.
That gap is the pattern worth carrying into October, the start of the peak season ahead of the festive period. As we write, in late September, the month has not happened. What is already published tells operators and investors which of the three numbers to read when it does: guests, nights, or value added.
What the 2025 count shows
Guests rose 15%, nights 17%, but value added grew only 2.7%.
INE counted 1,280,961 domestic guests, up 16.7%, and 852,177 foreign guests, up 12.5%. Domestic guests produced 3,040,613 nights, up 22%, and foreign guests 2,531,320 nights, up 10.9%. By our arithmetic the foreign guest stays 3.0 nights and the domestic guest 2.4.
Hotel employment rose 13.7% to 91,216 workers, from 80,196, as Notícias ao Minuto reported from the INE release. Direct value added in the sector moved from MT52.4bn to MT53.8bn, a rise of about 2.7%, and its share of GDP slipped from 3.61% to 3.57%. Guests and jobs grew several times faster than the value they created, which suggests that volume has been won at lower revenue per head.
Where the nights are
Length of stay, not guest numbers, separates the coast from the capital.
Maputo Province recorded 616,354 guests and 2,179,691 nights, about 3.5 nights each. Inhambane recorded 241,616 guests and 1,602,158 nights, and 144,466 of its guests were foreign, about 60% of the provincial total. Maputo city had 418,634 guests but only 453,537 nights, which is the profile of business and transit stays.
Smaller provinces are growing from low bases: Sofala from 92,485 to 133,848 guests, Niassa from 60,365 to 85,161, and Cabo Delgado from 44,716 to 60,603. A lodge in Vilanculos or Tofo sells a week of rooms, meals, boat trips and transfers to one guest; a city hotel sells a night. The two businesses need different occupancy maths.
What had to hold in 2026
Floods, air access and the road corridor shape the season more than marketing does.
Severe flooding between December 2025 and February 2026 affected more than a million people in southern and central regions and disrupted roads, Getaway reported in April, adding that Vilanculos flights were running on schedule and that the EN1 was still under repair. Overland visitors, who dominate the southern coast, depend on that road.
Air access is the other constraint. The government’s aviation masterplan, as Getaway summarised it on 1 July, allots US$710 million across 2026 to 2045 and projects about 2.8 million passengers a year at Maputo International Airport once upgrades are complete. That is a pipeline, not an operating airport, and no October seat will be added by it.
For visitors from abroad, Minister of Economy Basílio Muhate said in February that Mozambique received 1,271,327 tourists in 2025, according to mznews. The two series, border arrivals and hotel guests, count different things and should not be added.
What October can and cannot show
INE’s accommodation survey is annual, so the peak-season signal must come from elsewhere.
The accommodation count that produced the figures above arrived nine months after the year it measures. No official October guest total will exist by 31 October. The evidence will be airport passenger counts, border movements, operators’ own occupancy and the metical earnings of travel services in the balance of payments, each with its own lag.
A lodge owner should therefore compare bookings now against the 2025 pattern of long stays on the coast, price for a week and not a night, and set the festive-season rate by mid-October rather than waiting for official data. A city hotelier should test whether corporate and transit demand is holding. Investors weighing a first or second property should favour places where the guest stays more than three nights.
Sources
- Correio da Manhã Canadá (Lusa). “Turismo em Moçambique com novos máximos na procura e no emprego em 2025”. 30 September 2026. https://www.correiodamanhacanada.com/turismo-em-mocambique-com-novos-maximos-na-procura-e-no-emprego-em-2025-ine/
- Notícias ao Minuto (Lusa). “Turismo em Moçambique com novos máximos na procura e no emprego em 2025”. 30 September 2026. https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/3059424/turismo-em-mocambique-com-novos-maximos-na-procura-e-no-emprego-em-2025
- mznews. “Moçambique recebeu mais de 1,2 milhões de turistas em 2025”. 24 February 2026. https://mznews.co.mz/mocambique-recebeu-mais-de-12-milhoes-de-turistas-em-2025/
- Getaway. “Mozambique reopens to travellers as recovery gains pace after floods”. 2 April 2026. https://www.getaway.co.za/travel-news/mozambique-tourism-recovery-2026/
- Getaway. “New aviation masterplan positions Mozambique as Southern Africa’s next air travel hub”. 1 July 2026. https://www.getaway.co.za/travel-news/new-aviation-masterplan-positions-mozambique-as-southern-africas-next-air-travel-hub/
