Budget-savvy Berlin has plenty of style

BERLIN — Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit once famously described his eternally broke city as "poor, but sexy." A new crop of sleek budget hotels are betting that economy-minded tourists and business travelers like it that way.

On a cloudy autumn morning, the breakfast buffet is buzzing at Motel One, which has been booked solid since it opened near the city's tourist hub Alexanderplatz in June — the newest addition to a growing number of design-oriented budget hotels.

The breakfast of German bread, cold cuts and cheese before Marilyn Stotts seems rustic in contrast to the hotel's minimalist gray interior accented by flashes of color in the turquoise seating and silver globe light fixtures.

"It certainly has the Berlin sense of what's sexy now," said Stotts, a 27-year-old New Yorker on a business trip for a nonprofit organization, who said price was a key factor in choosing Motel One. She paid $82 for her room and $9 for breakfast.

Rooms in other aesthetically savvy hotels across Berlin cost as little as $53, like a single at Ostel, a no-frills hotel that specializes in retro communist-era East German furnishings.

With the euro reaching an all-time high against the dollar this past summer, it's becoming harder than ever to fashion affordable vacations in European capitals such as Paris and Rome.

Among the major capitals, Berlin remains an exception. According to Deloitte's Hotel Benchmark Survey, Berlin has the lowest average nightly hotel rate of all the major European cities, at just $122, while Moscow averages a steep $364 and London a cringe-worthy $256.

Berlin's affordability is one of the main factors drawing the hip, young crowd of thrifty tourists who don't want to sacrifice on style, according to Berlin Marketing Tourism GmbH spokesman Christian Taenzler. He said significant investments in this niche market have been developing "dynamically" for the past three years. Some 13,000 of the city's 90,000 hotel beds belong to budget hotels, he says, and a growing number can be found in smartly decorated, design-conscious hotels.

Berlin Tourism Marketing research shows that between January and July of 2007, the number of overnight stays in Berlin increased by 11.4 percent compared with the year before. Forty percent of these visitors are younger than 35 years old, a group particularly sensitive to budget and trends.

"Berlin itself is trendy," Taenzler said. "It's affordable, attractive, young and a big destination for budget airlines."