Consumer Demand Continues to be Firm

In the first half of 1991, expenditures on durable consumer goods, a cyclically sensitive component of consumption, grew only as fast as total consumption; this is in contrast to the development in recent years and the medium-term trend. The demand for vacations abroad was also rather weak as the result of crises in major destination countries. Retail trade benefitted from the favourable consumer demand as well as from the pick-up in the tourism business in Austria. Austrian resorts attracted many tourists who avoided countries faced with political crisis and environmental disasters.