600,000 guests expected
IFO: Euro tourists bring Germany billions in revenue
14.06.2024, 10:08 a.m.
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Hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected to attend the 2024 European Football Championship. According to calculations by the IFO Institute, these should give the German economy a boost. However, the European Championship would have little impact on the economy as a whole.
According to calculations by the Munich-based IFO Institute, the upcoming European Football Championship is likely to bring Germany an additional billion euros in foreign tourists. At the start of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, arrivals and overnight stays by foreign guests each rose by 25 percent, explained IFO researcher Gerome Wolf.
“If we also use this as a basis for the 2024 European Championship, we can expect a good 600,000 additional foreign tourists and 1.5 million additional overnight stays during the season.” This should be reflected in higher overnight prices and sales in the hospitality industry. As a result, this means an additional growth impulse of 1.3 percent in price-adjusted service exports in the current second quarter compared to the first quarter of 2024, according to IFO calculations.
However, these service exports would fall again after the end of the European Championship in July and thus in the third quarter due to tourists returning home. From an overall economic perspective, the effects of this type of major event are rather small, explained IFO economic chief Timo Wollmershäuser.
Domestic consumers would indeed spend more in the hospitality sector and in food retail for a short time during the games. However, they would reduce their spending elsewhere, so that private consumption as a whole would probably remain unaffected. “This is at least what the experience with the 2006 World Cup suggests.”