Trade sector · October 2026
Vienna has 7,682 active businesses licensed for Gastgewerbe according to the GISA trade register (as of October 2026); Austria-wide 56,418. Each licence counts once, at its registered location — branches registered only as additional premises are not counted separately. Below-average density and tangible market movement — a favourable combination.
Active locations in Vienna
Shortest path to a decision: the three districts with the lowest number of Gastgewerbe businesses per 10,000 inhabitants — on paper the largest market gaps in Vienna (for population ≥ 20,000).
Note: low density is a signal, not a guarantee. Combine it with the market movement above and the OSM visibility below before you commit.
The stock is holding steady since May 2025 (post-break baseline) — under 2 % net change. That does not automatically mean “no interest”: if market movement (churn index) is high at the same time, there is active turnover within an overall stable count.
Method change May 2025. Before May 2025 the figures come from the annual report (reference-date based), from May 2025 on from the monthly OgdAufrechteGewerbeberechtigung snapshots. The two sources count slightly differently — hence the visible break between April and May 2025. For the churn indicator we use only the clean May-2025-plus window, so the calculation is not distorted by the method jump.
Seasonal fluctuations. Smaller month-to-month movements are normal — trade licences are issued in bursts (month turns, quarter ends) and deregistered (often at year ends). A single month at +5 or −3 is not a trend break.
What a line does not show. The stock is a stock, not a flow. 500 active trade licences at a steady monthly stock can mean: (a) 500 dormant businesses with no movement, or (b) 480 stable plus 20 deregistering this month and 20 newly registering. The churn indicator measures exactly that difference — the curve does not show it.
Why we don't go back further. The GISA dataset only exists in structured form from 2018, before that only as non-anonymised internal data. Annual reports from 2019 could theoretically be integrated — that is a planned expansion. Currently: monthly snapshots since March 2025.
Context
The hospitality trade is the largest segment in the dataset by volume — over 50,000 active trade licences across Austria. This umbrella term covers very different types of business: restaurant, café, bar, patisserie, sausage stand, event catering, food truck. The regulatory requirements differ (concession under § 111 GewO, restriction to food or beverages), and so does the market dynamic.
A look at the data shows that in almost every federal state the movement dynamic is a volatile market — high turnover without meaningful net growth. In concrete terms: every month, exactly as many businesses close as open. For founders this is a mixed picture — the market is brutal, but spots keep opening up.
Lease agreements often run on five-year notice cycles, and the typical months for closures are January (after the Christmas trade) and August (after the summer break). The best times to take over an existing establishment are therefore September and February. Starting from scratch is capital- and time-intensive — 80% of your capital should be in the vault before you sign the lease.
Any establishment with more than negligible emissions (ventilation, exhaust air, outdoor seating, music above background level) requires an operating-facility permit under § 74 GewO. Processing time in Vienna is typically 3–6 months; in rural municipalities often longer. This period is routinely underestimated.
Tirol and Salzburg have very high per-capita densities — this is almost entirely due to tourism demand, not to oversaturation relative to the local population. In tourist districts, the sehr_hoch rating should therefore be read as an opportunity, not a warning.
A winter or summer business that is active for only 4–5 months still counts as an active trade licence year-round. This structurally biases tourism regions upward. The churn indicator captures this in part (seasonal businesses often show deregistrations and re-registrations), but it should be interpreted with caution.
Vienna has a relatively low hospitality density per capita, but over 250,000 daily commuters who eat lunch and go out after work during the week. This makes hospitality in inner-city districts more profitable than the plain per-10k calculation suggests.
Mandatory disclosure under the GewO: Gewerbeordnung 1994 § 111 for operating a hospitality business. Gewerbeschlüssel 5010 (Gastgewerbe) per GISA.
Insider analysis · Vienna
The typical active business in Vienna is 8 years old (median). 27 % are younger than 3 years, 21 % older than 20 years. Dominant legal form: 61.1 % registered companies.
Distribution of age in years across all 7,680 active locations. Median 8 years · P10–P90 0–30 years.
Bars = number of businesses per age-year bucket. Highlighted bar = median age. Small buckets under 5 businesses are suppressed as "·" (GDPR minimum cell size against re-identification).
When were the currently active businesses founded?
Solo (natural person) vs. registered company (GmbH, OG, KG, AG).
The higher the Gini index, the more the sector concentrates in a few postal-code areas. 0 = evenly distributed, 1 = everything in a single postal-code area. Vienna has 23 districts, which split into several postal-code areas.
Complementary signal
Our data shows how many businesses exist. Google Trends adds how often people search for “Restaurant” — the demand side. Together you see whether a market is constrained by supply or by demand.
Google Trends is a free third-party tool. We store nothing and pass no data on — the link opens directly on trends.google.com in a new tab.
Each dot is a trade sector. Left = lower density per 10,000 residents, top = more movement (registrations and deregistrations over the last 17 months).
Density per 10,000 inhabitants plus market dynamics over the last 17 months. Sorted by density, descending.
| Federal state | Locations | per 10k | Density | Market dynamics | net 11 mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tirol → | 9,661 | 124.0 | Very tight | Active market | +0.9 % |
| Salzburg → | 6,159 | 107.3 | Very tight | Active market | -0.4 % |
| Kärnten → | 4,934 | 86.5 | Getting tight | Active market | -0.9 % |
| Burgenland → | 2,010 | 66.6 | Getting tight | Active market | -1.8 % |
| Vorarlberg → | 2,671 | 64.8 | Some room | Growing, volatile | +2.2 % |
| Steiermark → | 7,527 | 59.2 | Some room | Active market | -0.7 % |
| Niederösterreich → | 8,797 | 50.9 | Room to grow | Shrinking, volatile | -2.6 % |
| Oberösterreich → | 6,977 | 45.4 | Room to grow | Active market | -1.2 % |
| Wien(here) | 7,682 | 37.6 | Room to grow | Active market | +0.8 % |
Sorted by Gastgewerbe density per 10,000 inhabitants, descending. “Licensed” = GISA trade licences, “OSM” = shop addresses visible in OpenStreetMap, “since May 25” = district net delta post method break (clean signal, without the May-2025 jump).
| Postcode | District | Lic. | OSM | Inh. | per 10k | Density | since May 25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1010 | Innere Stadt | 949 | 494 | 15,879 | 597.6 | Very tight | unchanged +0.0 % |
| 1070 | Neubau | 432 | 278 | 31,394 | 137.6 | Very tight | rising +0.7 % |
| 1060 | Mariahilf | 351 | 182 | 31,070 | 113.0 | Very tight | rising +3.8 % |
| 1080 | Josefstadt | 237 | 147 | 24,232 | 97.8 | Very tight | rising +0.9 % |
| 1090 | Alsergrund | 368 | 205 | 41,782 | 88.1 | Very tight | rising +0.5 % |
| 1040 | Wieden | 255 | 164 | 33,450 | 76.2 | Getting tight | rising +4.5 % |
| 1020 | Leopoldstadt | 583 | 271 | 114,122 | 51.1 | Getting tight | rising +2.3 % |
| 1030 | Landstraße | 468 | 248 | 99,954 | 46.8 | Getting tight | rising +2.2 % |
| 1150 | Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus | 322 | 117 | 75,384 | 42.7 | Getting tight | falling -3.6 % |
| 1050 | Margareten | 217 | 121 | 54,060 | 40.1 | Getting tight | falling -3.6 % |
| 1190 | Döbling | 248 | 172 | 76,203 | 32.5 | Getting tight | falling -2.4 % |
| 1170 | Hernals | 183 | 92 | 56,652 | 32.3 | Some room | falling -0.5 % |
| 1160 | Ottakring | 300 | 126 | 101,599 | 29.5 | Some room | falling -3.5 % |
| 1130 | Hietzing | 155 | 75 | 56,496 | 27.4 | Some room | rising +6.2 % |
| 1120 | Meidling | 271 | 114 | 102,344 | 26.5 | Some room | falling -2.9 % |
| 1180 | Währing | 135 | 86 | 51,177 | 26.4 | Some room | falling -1.5 % |
| 1200 | Brigittenau | 211 | 91 | 86,686 | 24.3 | Some room | falling -1.9 % |
| 1140 | Penzing | 242 | 102 | 99,469 | 24.3 | Room to grow | rising +4.3 % |
| 1100 | Favoriten | 536 | 182 | 225,013 | 23.8 | Room to grow | rising +0.6 % |
| 1230 | Liesing | 253 | 114 | 124,846 | 20.3 | Room to grow | rising +11.9 % |
| 1220 | Donaustadt | 424 | 200 | 235,361 | 18.0 | Room to grow | rising +2.9 % |
| 1210 | Floridsdorf | 342 | 143 | 191,527 | 17.9 | Room to grow | falling -0.3 % |
| 1110 | Simmering | 200 | 76 | 112,214 | 17.8 | Room to grow | falling -0.5 % |
Lic. vs. OSM: GISA also counts mobile or home-based businesses without a shop; OSM shows only those with a visible address. Vienna total: 7,682 licensed vs. ~6,324 in OSM (3800 with postcode, 2524 without).
Quick answers to the typical questions about Gastgewerbe in Austria.
Free · no account
Everything on this page — density, trend, market movement, demographics, districts — is calculated from open data and stays freely accessible. No account, no paywall, no tracking. The figures are recomputed every month from the GISA snapshot; the method is written down, and so are its limits.