Berlin, 12 December 2012 775 years old and more attractive than ever: Berlin celebrated its 775th birthday in October as it welcomed 1,050,160 visitors (+ 8.1 per cent). The Berlin-Brandenburg Statistics Office announced that guests from Germany and abroad spent 2,432,428 nights in Berlin during October. This represents an increase of 8.5 per cent over the same month last year.

The 20 million mark already crossed

The capital city has once again cracked the 20 million mark for total number of stays for a calendar year, but this is the first time this target has been met so early. From January to October, visitors spent 21,204,352 nights in Berlin. This represents an increase of 11.2 per cent over the same 10-month period last year.

"Berlin has year-round drawing power as shown by our October figures. The capital is no longer seeing seasonal dips in the autumn and winter months", says Burkhard Kieker, CEO of visitBerlin. "We are especially seeing growth in the number of travellers from Brazil, Russia and China. Our marketing efforts in these countries have paid off".

The number of visitors from Brazil rose by 33.3 per cent, from Russia by 24 per cent and from China by 28.4 per cent in October. Among Europeans, Berlin welcomed many Swedes (+59.9 per cent) and Turks (+52.7 per cent). A total of 392,783 visitors came from abroad (+13.2 per cent).

Also the number of visitors from Germany has grown: 657,377 German visitors (+5.2 per cent) spent a total 1,419,903 nights in their capital (+5.4 per cent).

Attracting the visitors in October: The Festival of Lights and the 775th Birthday Celebration

From 10 to 21 October the Festival of Lights set the capital and its attractions in a sea of colourful lights. visitBerlin estimates that 600,000 day-trippers and overnight guests came to Berlin for this event alone. On 28 October, numerous visitors came to help the city celebrate the 775th anniversary of its founding.

On average, visitors to Berlin spent 2.3 days in the city in October. A total of 125,986 beds were available in 781 Berlin establishments.

Who comes from where and for how long? Tourism-Statistics:

press.visitberlin.de/en/article/tourism-statistics