The sun is making its return to Berlin, and with it, Berliners are returning to their natural habitat: beers on Tempelhofer Feld, coffees along the Landwehrkanal and falafels at Boxhagener Platz. As spring approaches, tourists are sure to follow. Or are they?
According to the numbers, Berlin is struggling to attract tourists. In 2025, the city experienced a downturn of 3.8% in overnight stays compared to the previous year. That might not sound too bad, but it’s symptomatic of a bigger fact: Berlin’s tourism industry never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. As one of the city’s economic pillars, contributing roughly €15.1 billion in consumption and supporting over 224,800 jobs, any decline in tourism is a problem. In 2019, Berlin welcomed 14 million visitors. Five years later, Berlin had 12.7 million visitors. Meanwhile, cities such as Copenhagen, Athens and Madrid have exceeded their pre-pandemic tourism levels. So what’s up with Berlin?
A Connectivity Problem
For decades, Berlin’s brand was the capital of counterculture. The city promised liberty: sexual, creative or the liberty to reinvent itself. From opera to techno, it boasted an abundance of culture, with subsidies that kept that culture affordable. Low rents allowed artists, musicians and misfits to live here and create an energy that made Berlin “poor but sexy”, as Mayor Klaus Wowereit famously coined the city in 2003.
That formula thrived: fly cheap via budget airlines like EasyJet, book cheap accommodation, enjoy cheap beer and indulge in the city’s cheap and infinite nightlife. But as investment poured in, turning Berlin into Germany’s startup hub, it began driving out the very communities that shaped an alternative, ultra-cool safe haven. Flight costs have soared, with the €9.99 Ryanair and EasyJet flights feeling like an ancient relic. Now, BER Airport only runs at about half its capacity.
Christian Tänzler, spokesperson for VisitBerlin, is blunt about the core problem. “International guests aren’t coming to Berlin because we have a connectivity problem,” he says. “Before Covid, Berlin had two airports. Now it has one that performed at 40% below the 2019 performance for a long time.” Yet the issue runs deeper than infrastructure. “We have hardly any international, direct, long-haul flights,” Tänzler explains. “You always have to transfer. That’s an Achilles’ heel, especially for a location that lives very strongly from the MICE [market meetings, incentives, conferences and events].” The political dimension is stark. “To West Germany, there are 200 long-haul direct connections; to East Germany, there are four, and they’re all in Berlin.” Tänzler even suggests that Lufthansa and politicians from Frankfurt and Munich actively protect their hubs at Berlin’s expense.
An Identity Crisis
Berlin is no longer the cheap oasis it once was. Martin Wollberg, who runs Berlin on Bike and has led tours since 2004, recently returned from a European cities trip with an uncomfortable observation. “You pay something like €15 per meal in Paris, almost less than you pay in Berlin.” Even the vibe has changed. Walking home from his headquarters in the Kulturbrauerei, Wollberg noticed empty restaurants at 10pm. “If I would be just a visitor for two nights, I would think that maybe the place is not that popular. In Paris and Lisbon, the streets were packed, even in 10-degree weather.” Travelling through Europe, Wollberg noticed cities illuminating their buildings and bridges, creating vibrant evening atmospheres. “This is what I’m missing in Berlin,” he says. He also noticed that hubs like BER and Berlin Hauptbahnhof lack helpful staff at arrival points, which other cities provide.
Germany’s capital always had “bottom-up energy”, Wollberg explains, an organic creativity that emerged after the fall of the Wall, built on friends visiting friends rather than official marketing. Emiko Gejic from Clubcommission Berlin saw a similar trend. “Most of the clubs that are still standing now, opened a long time ago. During the 90s, it was easy to just use an old building, transform it and experiment. It was growing very organically. If you now want to open a club or any space, it’s very cost intensive. There are a lot of regulations; it’s very bureaucratic.” Gejic issues a warning that “if the scene is dying or disappearing, Berlin will lose its main USP.” She noticed that “Berlin is becoming more and more of a standardised German city that is affordable only to certain income groups.”
Leon, who worked in hospitality for years and lived in Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and now lives in Neukölln, has watched that transformation first-hand. “Everything is getting more expensive. The hot spot areas are getting more expensive. The rents are rising, so small businesses have to move out, and I think it’s an ongoing mechanism of the city slowly losing itself.”
Tänzler’s thoughts on the “poor but sexy” era of Berlin are clear. “That’s been over for 10 years.” The new narrative? “We used to be poor but sexy. Now we’re just sexy – free and sexy.”
VisitBerlin is pursuing what Tänzler calls “quality tourism”, meaning wealthier visitors who engage with the city’s culture, not cheap-beer seekers. “We’re no longer the cheap metropolis we used to be, and honestly we don’t want to be,” he says, citing Prague as a cautionary tale of beer-price tourism leading to overcrowding.
But can Berlin compete on quality without the organic creative energy that originally attracted visitors? On club culture, Tänzler is optimistic. “I wouldn’t call it club death, but transformation. The club scene is always a scene of change,” he says, pointing to Berghain as an example of diversifying into exhibitions and workshops as clubgoers age and behaviours shift.
A Marketing Disconnect
Yet the gap between image and reality persists. “The marketing around tourism for Berlin uses the narrative of being a free, creative city where you can be yourself and grow something new,” Gejic notes. “That used to be the case but has changed massively.” This raises an uncomfortable question: should Berlin even try to recover its 2019 tourism levels? Cities like Barcelona are now protesting that tourism dependency has destroyed liveability through overcrowding and housing crises.
Leon thinks a slowdown might help. “If it would slow down a little, that would be good for the city – for people who just moved here to get into the tempo of a city growing. Dependency on tourism shouldn’t be something you strive for.” Tänzler frames VisitBerlin’s goal differently: not as a specific visitor number, but a desire for Stadtverträglich (city-compatible) in tourism. “Tourism can only function in harmony between guests and residents,” he says.
Free and Sexy?
When asked to update Wowereit’s slogan for 2025, Gejic offers “challenging, but resilient”. The creative scene will always find new ways, she believes. “People fight for the city; the art and culture scene fights for the city.” But without addressing fundamentals – airport connectivity, affordable housing, support for experimental culture – Berlin risks becoming what it never wanted to be: just another expensive European capital. The question is whether ‘free and sexy’ can replace ‘poor but sexy’. Or if, by betraying the countercultural energy that made tourists want to visit in the first place, Berlin has lost its sex appeal entirely.
