Incoming tourism is the growth engine for German`s tourism industry and In 2006, for the first time, international visitors accounted for one in seven overnight stays in German hotels and guesthouses. Berlin and Brandenburg also recorded a significant increase in the number of overnight stays by internationalvisitors last year. More and more tourists from all over the world are discovering the attractions of Germany`s capital city, notes Petra Hedorfer, Chief Executive Officer of the German National Tourist Board (GNTB).

One in ten overnight stays by international visitors is in Berlin, added Hedorfer.

In 2006, Berlin recorded the highest proportion of international visitors of all the federal states: more than a third (37.2 per cent) of the overnight stays were by visitors from outside Germany. A total of 5.9
million overnight stays by visitors from abroad were registered last year, an increase of 17.9 per cent on the previous year. And the trend is stillrising: for January and February 2007 the number of overnight stays by international visitors had already topped 712,000, an increase of 14.9 per cent on the same period in 2006.

The most important source market for Berlin incoming is the United Kingdom, which accounted for 12.6 per cent of overnight stays by foreign visitors in Germany`s capital city. Then come the USA (9.2 per cent), Italy (8.8 per cent), the Netherlands (8.4 per cent) and Spain (6.6 per cent). Around half (45.6 per cent) of all overnight stays in Berlin were from the top five international source markets.

Inbound tourism has played a relatively minor role in Brandenburg to date. Seven per cent of the 665,600 overnight stays in 2006 were by international visitors. The number of overnight stays was up 12.3 per cent on the figure for 2005. Potsdam, the largest city in the state, benefited from the growing demand for city breaks in 2006, recording around 91,000 overnight stays by international visitors. This represents an increase of 37.3 per cent.

In the first two months of 2007, 56,700 overnight stays by international visitors were recorded for Brandenburg, 23.3 per cent more than for the same period in 2006.

The five most important source markets for destinations in Brandenburg are the Netherlands (16.8 per cent market share), Poland (9.5 per cent), the United Kingdom (5.9 per cent), Sweden (4.9 per cent) and the USA
(4.6 per cent).