6/17/2008

Bavaria is absolutely ‘in’ as a winter experience

Müller: "Bavaria is absolutely ‘in’ as a winter experience" 

MUNICH Bavaria’s popularity as a winter vacation destination has reached new record heights. Between November 2007 and April 2008, 10.7 million guests made sure of an all-time high in demand for winter tourism in the State of Bavaria with 29.5 million overnight stays. The number of visitors went up by 2.7 % or 300,000 compared with the previous winter season, while overnight stays increased by 2.1 % or 500,000. Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Emilia Müller, is delighted that the Bavarian tourist industry continued to expand last winter: "As a winter experience, Bavaria is more attractive than ever before and absolutely ‘in’. The large variety of offers from our tourist regions is being very well received. They are boosting Bavaria’s position as a destination all the year round", the Minister commented.

From Müller’s perspective, there are three major reasons for the State’s positive vacation balance: on the one hand, the capital of Munich is still booming as a tourist crowd-puller, once again attracting 5.2 % more guests last winter with 2.14 million. On the other hand, the upward trend is stabilizing in the health spas, which recorded a 4.2 % increase with 1.53 million guests. And last but not least, there was also a marked rise in the traditional Bavarian winter sports communities: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Lenggries, Schliersee and Lake Spitzingsee, Oberstdorf and Bodenmais, for example, reported double-digit growth rates for guest arrivals. "Here the impact of the greatly improved skiing conditions due to colder temperatures and investments in snow reliability was just as positive as more attractive conditions following the VAT reduction for mountain railways", the Minister underlined. Müller pointed out that it was not least for this reason that the classic win ter months of December through to February were mainly responsible for the new winter record.

Viewed in regional terms, the administrative district with the highest increase was Upper Franconia with 4.9 %, followed by Lower Bavaria with a plus of 4.2 %, Swabia with 3.6 %, Upper Bavaria with 2.9 %, Middle Franconia with 2.1 % and Lower Franconia with 1.6 %. Only the Upper Palatinate suffered a decline of -1.9 %. This largely represented a trend back to normal, after the Upper Palatinate had recorded by far the highest growth rate in all Bavaria only the winter before as a direct response to the Pope’s visit.

Of the foreign winter visitors to Bavaria, the Italians are numerically still the largest national group with 230,000 tourists and over the year ranked in third place behind the Dutch and the Americans. Winter vacations in white-and-blue Bavaria have in particular become more popular among Russian guests. Their numbers swelled by 15 % to over 57,000. The strong euro is being felt strongly by the tourist industry in Bavaria. For visitors from the major countries of USA and Switzerland it has recently become much more expensive to go on vacation in Bavaria, with the result that the influx of tourists from these countries has slowed down. 2.3 % fewer Americans and 3.7 % fewer Swiss came to Bavaria in the winter half of the year. This meant that the 2.4 % increase in the number of foreign visitors between November and April was for the first time in a long while less dynamic than for domestic guests.

Minister Müller therefore also sees the strong rate of the euro and the rising energy and fuel prices as undeniable burdens on the further development of guest figures in 2008. In view of the steady improvements in offers in the tourist infrastructure and the stable economic trend, she is, however, confident that the Bavarian tourist industry will on the whole continue to maintain its record course. 

Source: Invest in Bavaria