TOURIST TRADE TN BERLIN

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27987, 6 June 1956, Page 10

TOURIST TRADE TN BERLIN

SHORTAGE OF HOTEL BEDS

BIG PROGRAMME OF

BUILDING

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

. BERLIN. Hotels in West Berlin are to be modernised this year in a £900.000 programme aimed at attracting more foreign tourists. The City Government will lend the money to selected hotel owners.

Tourist traffic to West Berlin, which has steadily increased since the end °f World War 11, has made it necessary to bring the city’s hotels into line with international standards.

Only about 6000 hotel beds are available in West Berlin today compared : with a pre-war total of 25.000 for the whole city. Some 1200 of the available beds are in first-class hotels, conveniently situated and equipped with all modern comforts. They are almost always booked for weeks ahead, and preference is given to “regulars” or the guests of the Government or big industrial firms.

About 1800 are in medium size hotels. This is enough normally but insufficient during international meetings or exhibitions. Some 3000 beds offered by small hotels and boardin houses are usually only about 40 pc cent, occupied. Some of them, situate near the Soviet sector boundary or : deserted war-bombed areas amid ruins, hardly find any guests. Their owners have complainr bitterly that most of the Governrner loans will go to the more luxuriou hotels situated in the neighbourhood r the main railway station and on th' fashionable Kurfurstendanim. City officials reply that they are obliged to cater above all for the. well-to-do foreign tourist, of whom more than 200.000 visited West Berlin last year. For their sake, the better hotels must be modernised rather than cheap accommodation subsidised. “Sorry, no room with bath available, but I can offer you a delightful room without a bath for a very moderate Price.” has become something like a standard phrase from recention clerks at smart, centrally situated hotels. If the tourists come from overseas, they often abandon the trip to Berlin rather than do without a private bath-I room. Exhibition Visitors Tens of thousands of visitors, probablv the biggest tourist invasion since the war. are expected for the International Building Exhibition here next year, to *vhich the leading architects of the West are contributing m the construction of a model residential area. .That about one in three foreigners visiting West Berlin comes from the United States has encouraged American businessmen to invest millions of dollars in the hotel business in Berlin. Mr Conrad Hilton, the American “hotel king” came last year to conclude a contract with the City Government for the erection a 5.000,000-dollar luxury hotel in the centre of West Berlin to meet all the requirements of American tourists. The hotel is to have about 400 rooms and ample space for conferences and business meetings. It is to be financed partially from Marshall Aid counterpart funds. West Berlin hotel owners have raised strong objections to the project, but the City Government finally agreed because Mr Hilton n-omised to spend large sums on advertising Berlin as a tourist attraction—a measure from which all hotelkeepers will profit. The Shearton concern. another American company, also has plans for building a hotel in West Berlin, but so far the local hotel proprietors’ protests have prevailed.