5/8/2008

Five percent increase in overnight stays in the first quarter of the year / Bavaria’s Economics Minister Müller sees upswing in tourism as more broadly based

Müller: "Tourist state Bavaria is still a popular holiday destination"

MUNICH Holidaymakers in Bavaria are coming to stay for longer: in the first quarter of the current year, the rise in overnight stays in Bavaria of 4.9 percent compared with the previous year turned out to be nearly twice as high as the 2.9 percent increase in the number of guests to about 5.2 million. "With 15.3 million overnight stays, the 15 million mark was passed for the first time in the January to March period. The tourist state of Bavaria is still a popular holiday destination", Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Emilia Müller, was very satisfied to say. Even if the early Easter holidays played a role here, the trend still showed that tourism in Bavaria had picked up the impetus of last year.

Besides the longer length of the stays, the Minister is also particularly pleased at the positive trend in the rural regions. While overnight stays in the large Bavarian cities with a population of over 100,000 went up by 0.6 percent, the smaller localities registered an increase of more than 700,000 overnight stays or 6.1 percent. "The upswing is increasingly being felt on a wider scale and is more broadly based than it was last year", the Minister commented.

Another sector contributing substantially to the good trend outside the conurbations was currently the Bavarian health resorts. In the first quarter, they welcomed just under one million guests and booked 3.8 million overnight stays. In both cases, that meant a plus of around 8 percent. Minister Müller also attributes this to the image and marketing campaign currently being conducted with the well-known Bavarian actress Ursula Buschhorn.

Source: Invest in Bavaria