GERMANY: Berlin Continues To Attract A Record Number Of Visitors

Gross revenues have risen by €1 billion in the past two years. Some 14.7 million visitors stayed overnight in Berlin in the first half of 2017.

Visitors spend more money in the city.The tourism industry in Berlin has broken yet another record. Over the past two years, the gross amount of revenue generated by visitors to the German capital has climbed by about €1 billion to €11.58 billion a year.

This is the result of a new 2016 study on tourism as an economic factor conducted by dwif-Consulting GmbH for visitBerlin. The positive trend continued in the first half of 2017: the number of overnight stays in hotels and pensions rose moderately by 1.8 per cent to 14.7 million.

This growth is also reflected in higher revenues.

Ramona Pop, Senator for Economics, Energy, and Enterprises: The growth in Berlin’s tourism market has been a success story for many years. Berlin is known around the world as a city of freedom and tolerance.

We will continue to work towards acceptance and making Berlin a welcoming city for everyone.

First half of 2017: Berlin continues to become more popular with German visitors

In the first half of the year, 56 per cent of Berlin visitors came from within Germany, while 44 per cent came from abroad, as announced by the Berlin-Brandenburg Office for Statistics. Burkhard Kieker, CEO of visitBerlin says: I’m very pleased. The figures from our most important market, Germany, are growing steadily. In the foreign markets, worldwide uncertainty is not the only thing we have to contend with.

While the number of visitors from France and Great Britain have risen in the first half of 2017, figures from Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy did decline.

More visitors came to Berlin from overseas. The number of overnight stays from the US rose by 8.7 per cent, and visitors from China by as much as 17.3 per cent.

The number of visitors travelling to Berlin for conferences has also risen. In the first half of 2017, 4.96 million people (+1.8%) over the same period last year) attended 64,000 conventions and meetings (+1.9%) in the German capital.

Business travellers spent 3.9 million nights in Berlin over the first half of the year, an increase of 8 per cent. A quarter of all hotel bookings were made by conference delegates.

Analysis: for every night spent in hotels, an equal number stay with friends and family

According to the study, apart from the 31 million overnight stays counted in the hotel industry in 2016, 33.2 million overnight stays were spent by visitors who stayed with friends and relatives.

Some five million overnight stays were from visitors who booked with private landlords or through the sharing economy. The largest group of visitors to Berlin are people who come to the city for the day: 109 million people did just that in 2016.

Not only do more guests travel to the city,they spend more money than two years ago.

On average, every visitor to Berlin spends €64.89 per day. For hotel guests, the amount is as much as €205.80 per day. Visitors who stay with private landlords spend an average of €107.50 per day.

Numerous industries benefit from tourism. 48 per cent of the tourism turnover is attributable to the Berlin hospitality industry. Every third euro is spent in the retail sector. The remainder, some 20 per cent, goes to the services industry, such as public transport and event tickets.

GERMANY: More Gulf Medical Tourists Head To Berlin

Berlin wants to attract 10,000 additional tourists from the Arabian Gulf this year, as the city targets travellers seeking medical treatment.

Burkhard Kieker, the chief executive of visitBerlin, the tourism board of the German capital, was in Abu Dhabi to meet government health officials and representatives of local private hospitals to promote the city as a medical tourism destination.

Europe has been suffering due to the security situation for the past one year but we see a strong recovery in the number of tourists from the Gulf, Mr Kieker says.

Last year, Berlin received 50,000 tourists from the Arabian Gulf, of which about 12,000 were medical tourists, making it the second-most popular German city after Munich.

This year, Mr Kieker expects the number of tourists from the Arabian Gulf to grow by 20 per cent and the number of medical tourists to increase by about 30 per cent.

We expect an increase in medical tourists because leading families from the region come to Berlin, it is a city where you can feel safe, it has a large Muslim population, it has great shopping and has around 28 five-star hotels, Mr Kieker said.

There has been heavy investment in the hospitals and clinics, and an increase in Arabic-speaking staff.

The changes in insurance policies in Abu Dhabi that make it more expensive for some Emiratis to seek treatment abroad did not impact the patient numbers to Berlin, according to Mr Kieker.

There has been a rise in the number of self-pay patients to Berlin because they do not want to wait in a line, although the majority of the patients are still government sponsored, he said.

Emiratis and Gulf medical tourists typically seek oncology, urology, cardiology, diabetology and trauma care treatment.

An average Emirati patient can stay anywhere between two weeks and three months,said Nizar Maarouf, the vice director of Vivantes International Medicine, a Berlin-based healthcare group with nine hospitals.

Berlin has about 80 clinics and hospitals such as the Vivantes hospital group and Charite Berlin.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the top countries in the Arabian Gulf region to send medical tourists to Germany, including Berlin.

Etihad flies to Berlin twice daily from Abu Dhabi.

Qatar Airways also connects the UAE capital to Berlin. Emirates is yet to get landing rights in Berlin.

Terrorist attacks in Europe have hurt its tourism sector.

In its annual report, Emirates cited these terror attacks as among the reasons for soft demand to Europe from the region.