Bore-lin: Russians No Longer Interested in Germany

The flow of Russian tourists traveling to Germany is now down to a trickle due to an increasingly patriotic Russia, which believes Berlin all too eagerly takes orders from Washington, a German newspaper wrote on Friday.

The German government’s mimicking of Washington’s behavior on the international scene has not been lost on Russians who have started to lose interest in visiting the country, Wirtschaftswoche weekly business news magazine wrote.

Meanwhile, the German economy is already feeling the pinch of this dramatic drop in the number of Russian tourists coming to the country.

A survey, conducted by the newspaper, showed that this year the Germany economy had lost at least 275 million euros from the 30 percent drop in the tourist flow from Russia compared to last year, with retail trade and tourism being the hardest hit.

“Russian tourists are very good clients and their absence is very bad for our economy,” CityPartnerMünchen company’s managing director Wolfgang Fischer told Wirtschaftswoche.

Hotels in Berlin, Munich, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Dresden – traditional destinations for Russian tourists in Germany – have suffered the most from the Russian vacationers’ sudden  loss of interest in the pleasures of the German holiday season.