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Can Americans travel to Germany for tourism this summer?

Germany has long been a top travel destination for Americans - before the pandemic hit. Will US tourists again be able to pack their bags for the Bundesrepublik in the coming months?

Published: 1 June 2021 18:23 CEST
Updated: 5 June 2021 09:23 CEST
Can Americans travel to Germany for tourism this summer?
Archive photo shows an American Airlines flight departing from Frankfurt. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Silas Stein

For more than a year, vacations to Germany were impossible as most travel from the US – and many other countries outside Europe – remained heavily restricted amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet as increasingly more Americans become fully vaccinated – and Germany’s coronavirus situation steadily improves – it’s looking more likely that travel for tourism could again be allowed this summer.

READ ALSO: Germany’s emergency brake ‘set to expire’ amid low Covid figures

The tourism industry – which is beginning to reopen in most of Germany – is eager for their arrival: From 2018-2019, Americans comprised the third largest group of international visitors to Germany, and the largest from outside of the EU, according to Statista. 

Typically around 2.2 million Americans visit the Bundesrepublik each year, making it the fourth most popular destination in Europe for them.

Which Americans can travel to Germany?

Yet tourism is still currently put on hold. At the moment, Germany only allows unrestricted entry into the country for a small handful of non-EU countries, not including the US, according to the Foreign Ministry. 

However, it continues to broaden the definition of “essential travel” into the country, as long as travellers comply with testing and quarantine rules. 

These reasons include meeting an unmarried partner who is a resident in Germany (if they first fill out a form), short term work including business trips, medical procedures, and those visiting for urgent family reasons, including the birth of a child or grandchild.

The US Embassy in Berlin has urged anyone unsure about their individual situation to contact their local consulate before booking travel.

On Tuesday June 1st, Germany downgraded its coronavirus threat level, which is likely to influence how other countries, including the US, will assess travel here. 

For Americans eager to jump the gun and book a flight to Germany, several commercial airlines and booking websites such as Orbitz are offering regular commercial flights from the US, with either the possibility of a full refund or change to a later date for free. 

READ ALSO: ‘Significantly better situation’: Germany’s Covid danger level downgraded for first time in six months

Will Germany relax the rules for vaccinated US tourists?

EU ambassadors for the 27 member states in May recommended that rules should be changed to allow non-essential visits into the EU by travellers who are fully vaccinated – in other words with both doses of a two-dose vaccine or one in the case of the Johnson & Johnson injection.

However, on the unresolved question of how visitors will be able to prove they have been vaccinated, the EU said it will be up to individual member states to decide what evidence they will accept.

Germany has already eased most quarantine requirements after travel for fully vaccinated people, with the exception of those coming from a virus variant area. Testing requirements are still in place, such as showing a negative test from the last 48 hours. 

In May the EU Commission president and former German defence secretary Ursula von der Leyen revealed the bloc’s plan “to revive the tourism industry and rekindle cross-border friendships”.

The sun rises in Warnemünde, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Friday morning. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Jens Büttner

“We propose to welcome again vaccinated visitors and those from countries with a good health situation. But if variants emerge we have to act fast: we propose an EU emergency brake mechanism,” said Von der Leyen.

The EU has been trying to push a coordinated response across the 27 member states to allow for tourist travel from non-EU countries, which was effectively banned in March 2020.

It looks likely that Germany, and other EU member states, will allow travellers from certain non-EU countries deemed to be low risk if they are fully vaccinated, or potentially also if they can show a negative test result from a PCR swab test from within the last 48 hours before travel to Germany.

The rules, however, have yet to be confirmed.

Some EU countries, including Italy, Spain and Greece, have gone their own way, already announcing plans to allow vaccinated tourists to visit from the US.

When will the rules for summer be confirmed?

The German government is expected to make further announcements on the rules for travel from outside Europe this summer by the end of June – when it says the country’s travel pass scheme is set to be rolled out.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said that the country’s so-called CovPass, a health certificate that will allows people to upload their health status (such as full vaccination or negative test) for smoother travel, will be ready by the end of June. That’s roughly in line with the date provided by the EU.

READ ALSO:

The EU says it has been working closely to inform the US, the World Health Organization and others about its progress to allow the certificate to be used on a wider scale. But it is not clear how this will work in practice for travellers from the US, who mostly don’t have vaccine certificates with QR codes on them – a key part of the new digital passport. 

For now, most travellers coming from outside the European Union will still need to follow any entry bans as well as quarantine and testing rules, which vary depending on the country you are travelling from.

See The Local’s Germany travel news section for the latest updates.

For more information on the current restrictions and health situation in Germany please see the Foreign Ministry’s website (in English).

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TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Published: 23 August 2023 11:36 CEST
Updated: 26 August 2023 18:32 CEST
Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate). 

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average. 

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal. 

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun. 

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring. 

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022. 

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices. 

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

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