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Recession-hit brothels offer novel promotions

The "flat-rate sex" promotions, which are based on all-you-can-eat restaurants, have been introduced by brothel owners in a bid to revive trade that has fallen around 30 per cent in the economic downturn.

Other imaginative offers include rebates for pensioners and people on benefits, 10 per cent discounts for men who arrive by bicycle or public transport, and free shoe-polishing and clothes pressed for customers who stay overnight.

But it is the flat-rate deals – which are priced as low as £60 (€70) – that have attracted particular controversy in a country where prostitution is legal and generally well-tolerated. The promotion is popular which brothel owners who have to pay their sex workers a fixed daily wage whether or not they have any clients. But conservative politicians have expressed disgust at the innovation and have ordered a wave of police raids on sex clubs in an effort to bring it to an end.

“This is an outrageous violation of human dignity,” Heribert Rech, the Baden-Württemberg interior minister, told The Times.

Because the promotion is not forbidden by law, officers have focused their raids on immigration and hygiene offences at brothels where is has been introduced.