With over a million overnight guests, Berlin was Germany’s most visited travel destination in May 2022. 6.4 percent of the 16.3 million guests who visited Germany stayed in the capital. Compared to 2021, which was much more affected by corona restrictions, Berlin had seven times as many travelers. However, there were almost a fifth fewer guests than the pre-Corona level of around 1.3 million arrivals in May 2019.
Away from the capital, too, people increasingly traveled to the large German cities last May. The six largest German towns were among the country’s ten most visited travel destinations: Berlin followed by Hamburg, Munich, the Main and Taunus metropolitan region with the city of Frankfurt, the Stuttgart region, and Cologne with the Rhein-Erft district. The most visited rural region was the Black Forest, with a good 790,000 overnight guests last May, followed by the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein.
On the other hand, anyone who went on a trip in May of the Corona years 2020 and 2021 was more drawn to rural regions and less to the big cities. In these two years, Berlin was only fourth among the most popular travel destinations in May – behind the Schleswig-Holstein travel regions of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, and the Black Forest.
Of the almost 16.3 million overnight guests in Germany last May, around 2.5 million or 15.5 percent came from abroad. Most visitors came from the Netherlands (381,000), Switzerland (282,000), and the USA (207,000). The proportion of guests from abroad was particularly high in Berlin (30.9 percent) and Munich (34.7 percent). However, it was lower in rural regions such as the Black Forest (25.2 percent) or the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein (7.9 percent).
