German hotel ranking list highlights eastern tourism potential

Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Munich are the most attractive German cities for investment in new hotel projects, due to their growing numbers of overnight stays and the high occupancy rate of their beds, a new study "Hotel Market Ranking" from real estate consultants Wüest & Partner shows.

In pure number terms Berlin, with 24.1 million overnight stays tops the list of overnight stays, followed by Hamburg and Munich, then Leipzig and Dresden. A notable exception among the top cities is Frankfurt, for whom no reliable figures were available, but it would also certainly figure in the Top 5.

Investors have already invested more than €2bn in German hotels in the first six months of this year, according to separate figures from JLL, fully 35% more than in the same period last year, and a new record. The ten-year average for a six month period is €764m, says JLL. The sector is seeing increasing investment from open-ended funds and insurers and pension funds.

However, as an investment market the attraction –and the ranking in the Wüest & Partner study - lies in a combination of the number of overnight stays and the bed occupancy rate. In Berlin the bed occupancy rate in 2014/2015 was 59%, putting it into fourth place of the 328 German cities and regions covered in the study. The number of beds in the capital rose by 22% to more than 112,000 between 2010 and 2014, while at the same time the bed occupancy rate rose by 7.6%.

Notable also in the rankings for their investment potential were the hotel markets in the northern part of the country, particularly Bremen, Rostock, Kiel, Lübeck and the region of North Friesland, as well as in the south - Erding (due to its proximity to Munich airport), and the historic city of Würzburg.

Dresden was another city with a strong rise in the number of beds over the period, along with Leipzig. The two eastern cities saw a rise in overnight stays of 26% to 4.2 million in Dresden, and in Leipzig of 32% to 2.5 million.

Karsten Jungk, managing director of Wüest & Partner in Berlin, highlights the rise in overnight stays in the two eastern cities – with Rostock also placing eighth on the list – saying that "Quite apart from Berlin, a clear magnet for millions of visitors, the study highlights the momentum being gained by Germany's eastern states."

To access the full report contact Wüest & Partner at berlin@wuestundpartner.com