Germany now sits between the Gabon and Mongolia in the 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report’s “safety and security” field, having plummeted 31 places since the 2015 edition of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) biannual report measuring how “tourism-friendly” economies are.
Overall, Germany was ranked a very attractive tourism economy in the report, coming third out of 136 countries, after Spain and France. They were followed by Japan in fourth place and the UK in fifth.
Germany scored highly in a number of areas, coming top for hygiene and health, and excelling in a number of the report’s categories including cultural resources, human resources, infrastructure, and environmental sustainability.
But travellers have become wary of the security situation in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to well over a million people from the third world in 2015, resulting in the country being hit by a series of high-profile terror attacks.
“The overall sense of safety among business travelers across Germany has fallen,” said WEF spokesman Georg Schmitt, and explained the risk of terrorism is playing on tourists’ minds.
Germany isn’t alone in having experienced a marked decline of its reputation as a safe tourist destination, according to Schmitt.
“Germany has slipped further than most, but the same trend can be seen in almost all western European countries,” he told Die Welt.
A number of its European neighbours fared even worse than Germany with regards to their security ratings in the report, with France ranking 67th and the UK 78th.
Earlier this month, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) released a report showing a dramatic rise in migrant crime in 2016 compared to the previous year.
On Wednesday, Breitbart London reported Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) admitted that thousands of former Taliban fighters could have entered the country, potentially endangering neighbouring countries such as France.