In Germany, after two years of a pandemic, summer tourism has started to grow again – both abroad and domestically. As a result, the German tourism industry has already returned to the pre-2019 crisis level on several indicators, and in some it has even surpassed it. This was greatly facilitated both by the willingness of travel-hungry Germans to spend more money on travel and by rising prices for industry services.

The crisis is over for the big German tour operators

“The crisis is a past stage,” said Fritz Joussen, head of the world’s biggest tour operator, the German company TUI. According to the manager, the number of rides sold for the current summer season has reached about 90% of the 2019 level and, thanks to higher prices, the current quarter will provide the highest quarterly revenue in the company’s history.

Another major German tour operator, Alltours, has already completely surpassed pre-crisis numbers. “This summer season, we have 10% more guests and more than 20% revenue growth,” said company owner Willi Verhuven, explaining that customers want to “pay more” this year: they book better hotels and choose with more often the all-inclusive service.

The head of the FTI, Ralph Schiller, points out that the demand for classic vouchers (Pauschalreise), when the tour operator takes over the organization of the trip and the services are paid in advance, is even higher than usual in Germany this year. He believes his company “if the current trend continues, by the end of the year, approximately 15% more tickets will be purchased than before the pandemic.”

Demand for classic tours rises in Germany

This trend may be due to the fact that tourists, in a context of a pandemic that is too far away, prefer to deal with reputable tour operators that, in the event of unforeseen events, are reliable and that, in particular, guarantee the return of their customers to their homeland.

Hotel complex in the Punta Cana area of ​​the Dominican Republic

Another reason may well be better prices. “High inflation should stimulate demand specifically for tours,” says Ingo Burmester, head of Central Europe business at DER Touristik. After all, tour operators, he recalls, buy quotas of seats on planes and hotels long before the start of the season, and individual tourists pay current prices on booking portals, which have grown significantly during this period.

Indirect but very convincing (but extremely unpleasant for tourists) evidence of a renewed boom in outbound tourism in Germany this summer was the gigantic hour-long queues at German airports in front of check-in counters and security posts. This is because airlines and airports, which have greatly reduced or lost their staff during the pandemic, in the face of staff shortages in the German labor market, have not had time to recruit the workers needed to handle the sharply increased passenger flow.

The German hotel and restaurant business doubled its revenue in one year

As Germans are traditionally attracted to warm seas in summer, particularly the Mediterranean Sea, outbound tourism has traditionally played a more important role in the German tourism industry than domestic tourism.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria is very popular with German and foreign tourists

However, German domestic tourism, specifically the German hotel industry, more than doubled (109%) nominal revenue in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period last year, the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced. on August 19th. This result, however, is not all that surprising as at that time lockdowns and other quarantine restrictions were in place across the country.

Compared to the first six months of the pre-pandemic year, revenue was 13% lower. This, however, is also unsurprising, as in 2019 the sector, after a whole decade of steady growth, set an absolute record both in terms of the number of overnight stays from domestic and foreign guests, as well as in terms of revenue. With such a high bar, the financial result obtained looks like a clear success, especially since the first half of the year in the industry is usually always lower than the second, as it falls in the two main summer months – July and August.

The flow of foreign visitors to Germany is rapidly recovering

Destatis data shows that the German hotel business is recovering and growing at a faster rate than the restaurant business. This proves that it is the tourist boom that is happening, as the food establishments are mainly used by local residents.

Warm July 2022. Beach on the Baltic Sea on the island of Usedom in northeast Germany

Thus, in June 2022, the number of overnight stays in hotels, guesthouses, guesthouses and campsites in Germany amounted to 48.9 million, which was only 3.4% lower than in June 2019. In other words: at the beginning of the summer, companies in the sector almost returned to pre-crisis levels. Furthermore, the occupation was provided by domestic tourists as well as business travelers. There were a total of 42.5 million of them, which represents 0.3% more than in June 2019.

At the same time, foreign visitors accounted for 6.4 million overnight stays, down 22.2% from the record level reached in June 2019. Therefore, the flow of tourists from abroad has not yet returned to Germany to the previous level. to the pandemic. But it is recovering very quickly after the lifting of quarantine restrictions: compared to last year, from June 2021, the number of overnight stays from foreigners increased by 245%.