Tourist destination no. 1: the Spreewald with 920,000 overnight stays Photo: Frank Hammerschmidt/dpa
By Michael Sauerbier
Full apartments, hotels and campsites, Brandenburg’s house and charter boats: fully booked. After two years of Corona, the desire to travel is huge again.
The tourism industry is jubilant: In the first half of the year, three times as many guests came to the country as in 2021, albeit for a shorter time. The number of overnight stays rose from 2.5 to 5.7 million. Almost as many as before the pandemic (6.2 million). In 2020 and 2021, the number of guests had halved.
Finally, landlords, boat rental companies and hoteliers no longer have to live on state aid and can earn money again. The number of beds has even increased compared to 2019. Tourist magnets are the Spreewald and the Oder-Spree lake district, each with almost a million overnight stays.
The big winners are the bed and breakfast hotels (+30 percent), the losers are the holiday homes (-25 percent). The biggest problem is the lack of staff. Even if no business had to close as a result. “But that can happen in winter,” says tourism marketing manager Matthias Knospe, “also because of the energy costs.”
It remains questionable whether the second half of the year will go just as well: inflation and a new corona wave could curb the desire to travel.