From 13 to 15 May 2012, the German National Tourist Board (GNTB) is hosting the 38th GTM Germany Travel Mart™ together with Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH and Tourismus Marketing Gesellschaft Sachsen mbH. Other important GNTB partners are Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Deutsche Bahn AG. "The GTM is the biggest event of the year for Germany's inbound travel industry and is extremely important in terms of international marketing. This is where key accounts from all over the world can come together with German suppliers," explained Petra Hedorfer, Chief Executive Officer of the GNTB. For medium-sized tourism providers, this platform is a unique opportunity to establish contacts within the international travel industry and to promote their latest products and services. The GTM is going green for the first time this year and is also being supported by the GNTB with a host of social media activities. Another first at the 2012 GTM is the live social media newsroom featuring multimedia content on the @gtm2012 Twitter feed and on Storify. And in another premiere, the GTM press conference is being streamed live on the GNTB website at www.germany.travel/gtmlive.

'Vibrant, fashionable, innovative'. The German National Tourist Board (GNTB) plans to use a new broad-based social media campaign to promote Germany as a travel destination around the world, particularly among young travellers. The campaign will be launched at the ITB 2013 in Berlin and will continue throughout 2013 and 2014. The planned campaign will support the theme for 2013: 'Germany for young people – vibrant, fashionable, innovative' which caters to a tourism segment offering vast economic potential. The target group is also huge, with current figures showing that about a third of all international visitors to Germany are under the age of 39. "Young people visiting from abroad today are Destination Germany's future holidaymakers and business travellers. They are becoming an ever more important target group, especially as domestic tourism will be increasingly affected by demographic change," said Petra Hedorfer, Chief Executive Officer of the GNTB.

Echoing Germany’s success from around the world, the overnights by American visitors to Germany increased by 1.1 percent in January 2012 for a total of 244,912 according to the latest federal statistics. “It is a bright and positive start in the new year,” said Bernd Haessler, Acting Regional Manager of the Americas for the German National Tourist Office (GNTO).

Germany has become a magnet for the young, innovative, inspiring and aspiring artists, architects, designers and creators. International artists, architects, designers and musicians are flocking to Germany to be part of the creativity and cool events.

The Easter celebrations are among the oldest, most traditional and unique celebrations in Germany. A myriad of differing regional traditions, Easter markets and special celebrations start weeks before the four day Easter weekend from April 5 to April 9, 2012.

The kick-off event for the theme year 2012 "Business Travel to Germany" in New York organized by the German National Tourist Office (GNTO) in cooperation with the German Convention Bureau (GCB) gave 60 journalists and meeting planners the chance to find out about Germany as a top travel destination for the business traveler.

Germany is more popular than ever as a travel destination and achieved impressive figures last year despite the tough global economic situation. In 2011, Destination Germany beat the record set in the previous year by reaching 63.7 million overnight stays by foreign visitors.

dOCUMENTA: a pivotal feature of the global art scene. A mirror on society and a showcase for international art, dOCUMENTA in Kassel has rapidly become one of the world's foremost recurring exhibitions for contemporary art. It will be held for the 13th time next year.