Berlin, 18 February 2011 Berlin tourism looks back on a successful year 2010. For the first time, more than 9 million visitors came to the German capital (+9.5%). According to the numbers published today by the Statistics Office of Berlin-Brandenburg, a total of 20.8 million room nights were registered for the Berlin accommodation facilities. This corresponds to a 10.2% rise.

"The fact that we exceeded the 20 million mark for room nights in this way is a wonderful surprise for Berlin", stresses visitBerlin CEO Burkhard Kieker. "A higher result was only impaired by the freak weather in December. The partly extreme traffic conditions on the roads, railway tracks and airports prevented many visitors from traveling to Berlin at the end of the year."

In 2010 7.3% more guests from Germany came to Berlin. However, the high rise in visitor numbers from abroad (+13.7%) made a particularly strong contribution to the record result. Burkhard Kieker: "This shows that our focus on foreign activities bears fruit and that we get closer to our long-term objective of further stepping up the share of foreign visitors."

In December 2010 a total of 648,030 visitors travelled to Berlin (+0.4%). The number of international guests rose by 2.9% to 239,945. Particularly strong growth rates were recorded for visitors from Russia (+44%) and the USA (+10.2%).

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