© dpa
The number of tourists in Berlin has continued to rise. In the first six months of this year, there were almost 4.4 million, as the Berlin-Brandenburg Statistics Office announced on Thursday.
"The guests are coming back to Berlin. A good sign," said Burkhard Kieker, managing director of the tourism company Visit Berlin. By comparison, there were 2.5 million guests this time last year in the first half of the year.
Of the 4.4 million guests, around 3 million came from within Germany and almost 1.4 million from abroad, especially from Great Britain, the United States and the Netherlands. On average, guests stayed in Berlin for 2.4 days. In total, the industry counted 11.15 million overnight hotel stays. "Berlin benefits insanely from national guests, Germany remains absolutely the most important market," said Thomas Lengfelder, Chief Executive of Dehoga Berlin.
Despite this development, however, the numbers are not yet at pre-crisis levels, he said: from January to June 2019, the statistics office counted 6.7 million guests with 16.1 million overnight stays. Lengfelder expects that the pre-crisis level could be reached by the end of September. However, there is still "a great deal of uncertainty" among hotels and restaurants for the period from October.