Munich runs Germany's richest visitor economy: Oktoberfest alone produces over €1 billion of activity in sixteen days, hotel rates peak at €415, and the city's purchasing power — the country's highest — keeps prices climbing without losing crowds.
The festival is an economy, not an event: visitors spend ~€442 million on the grounds themselves (€70.22 a head on average), out-of-towners add ~€505 million in accommodation, and the full footprint — taxis, Tracht shops, city tours, restaurants — carries the total past €1 billion in a normal year. The 2025 edition cleared that bar despite losing an afternoon to a security closure that alone cost an estimated €21 million.
Prices rise and nobody blinks: a Maß went from ~€8.95 in 2010 to €14.80–15.90 in 2026. Beer consumption per visitor is actually falling (6.5 million liters for 6.5 million people — exactly one each), while non-alcoholic sales climb 6–10% a year. Munich's biggest party is quietly sobering up — and quietly getting more expensive.
Under the festival sits Germany's most affluent city economy: the highest purchasing power in the country, unemployment at German lows, and a corporate roster (BMW, Siemens, Allianz, Munich Re) that fills business hotels at rates most German cities only see during fairs.
Tourism contributes around 8.5% of the city's GDP. The visitor-spend mix is unusually balanced: trade fairs and corporate travel in the spring and autumn shoulders, Oktoberfest in September–October, Christmas markets in December, and the Alpine-leisure flow all summer.
Munich is expensive by German standards and fair by Swiss ones: mid-range hotels €120–180, five-stars €250–400 (×2–3 at Oktoberfest), a beer-garden dinner with a Maß around €20, museum entry €7–14, and the superb MVV day ticket under €10.
The value play is the plateau: Bavarian lunch menus (Mittagsmenü) at €12–16, the €1 Sunday admission at the Pinakothek museums, and beer gardens where you may legally bring your own food — the most charming loophole in European dining.
Where Munich money is well spent: a tent table at Oktoberfest (the reservation vouchers are the festival's real currency — €30–50 per person of mandatory consumption, worth every euro against the alternative of standing), one dinner at a Wirtshaus doing modern Bavarian (not the tourist Hofbräuhaus), and a Bayern-Ticket day trip to Neuschwanstein or Salzburg — the best €29 in German travel. Where it's wasted: airport taxis (the S-Bahn is faster at peak), hotel rooms booked inside Oktoberfest weeks at the last minute, and any souvenir stein bought on the grounds — 116,000 were confiscated in 2025; buy the official one at the shop.