GCC going strong for Destination Germany
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Incoming travel to Germany is
continuing to grow. After a very good start to the year, Destination Germany again delivered significant growth in the first third of 2012. According to figures from the Federal Statistical Office, the number of overnight stays by visitors from abroad in the period from January to April 2012 rose by over 10% compared with the same period in 2011. Overall, almost 17.6 million overnight stays by international visitors were recorded between the start of the year and the end of April, with significant increases in the major source markets.
“Destination Germany is on an extremely consistent growth trajectory,” declared Ernst Burgbacher, Member of the German Parliament, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology and Federal Government Commissioner for SMEs and Tourism. “In the first third of 2012, we were already well ahead of our forecasts for the year as a whole”, added Petra Hedorfer, chief executive officer of the German National Tourist Board (GNTB).
The GCC countries continue to represent one of the top twenty source markets in the German tourism industry and the latest figures demonstrate that the popularity of Germany as travel destination is continuously on the rise in this region. For the first time, the mark of one million overnight stays by travellers from the Arabian Gulf region was outdone in 2011. Yet, during the first four months of 2012 a further increase of 14.8% was registered as compared to the same timeframe in the previous year, with 254.167 overnight stays by GCC travellers registered from January to April 2012 against the 221.400 overnight stays during the same period of 2011.
In 2011, visitors from abroad generated almost a third of spending by overnight visitors
