Failure to Recover from Travel Depression Berlin, Oct. 9.
Although the number of foreign visitors to Germany and Berlin especially has been steadily increasing in recent years, there is still a curious decline in the number of hotels which first started after the War. During the last 20 years the number of hotel beds in Berlin has dropped from 30,000 to 25,000. 1933 the reasons given were that the trade slump and general depression had reduced the number of tourists, but since then more and more people have been coming to Berlin and still there is no improvement, In the busy centre of the city many hotels have been made into offices or now house various official departments. Normally the reduction in accommodation makes very little difference but when big exhibitions or meetings are being held there is a shortage of hotels. The President of the Tourist Union is approaching official quarters with a request that a stop should be put to this conversion of hotels into offices.
He points out that the hotels in the centre of the city are the most popular with foreign visitors and that if left unchecked the present tendency will lead to a serious shortage in a few years.—Trans-Ocean.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.