[ad_1]
Corona’s travel advisories are a disaster for hoteliers. It becomes particularly bitter when there are no corona cases at the site, as in the Austrian Kleinwalsertal. There they protested, successfully.
By Holger Schwesinger, tagesschau.de
“There are exactly zero rooms occupied,” says Fried-Jochim Störmer. He runs the “Suitehotel” in Kleinwalsertal and has had a massive problem since September 23rd. Because on that day, Germany issued a travel advisory for the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, and the Kleinwalsertal is in this state.
“Our guests left our house in a hurry and all existing reservations were immediately canceled,” Störmer said midweek. tagesschau.de. “We couldn’t do anything else and we’ve laid off our entire staff. We can’t handle costs any other way.”
The only way to the valley comes from Germany.
Which particularly bothered Störmer and many others in the valley at the northern tip of the Alps: The travel warning was given across the board based on state-wide administrative boundaries, regardless of geographic features and situation. Royal Crown.
According to authorities, there have been exactly three cases of corona in Kleinwalsertal since the start of the pandemic, currently there is not a single one. And the valley has little to do with Austria, at least geographically. Because it is a supposed enclave – a chain of mountains up to 2,500 meters high separates it from the rest of the Alpine republic, the only way to the valley comes from Oberstdorf, and that is in Germany.
In spring, the Walsers were trapped in their valley.
This special situation has complicated the lives of the around 5,000 inhabitants of the four villages in the valley on several occasions during the corona pandemic. In March of this year, they were suddenly confronted with something that had not been known there for many decades: a border.
Due to its special location, the valley has been a customs exclusion zone since 1891 and is therefore economically connected to Germany. Before the euro, payments were not made with shillings, but with D-Mark, and there were no border controls on the road to Oberstdorf. In the spring of 2020, the border was suddenly closed completely and residents were only allowed to leave their valley in rare cases.
“There is a threat of total economic loss”
The reaction to the travel advisory in September was correspondingly emotional. There is a threat of “total economic loss”, as Andi Haid, the mayor of Mittelberg in Kleinwalsertal, put it. Because the valley lives almost exclusively on tourism.
The industry launched an online petition that attracted more than 10,500 supporters. And even Federal Minister Gerd Müller intervened, it is true that not in his role as Minister of Development Policy, but as a deputy of the CSU whose constituency is in neighboring Oberallgäu.
That was a success: yesterday evening the classification as a risk zone for the Kleinwalsertal was lifted again, as well as for the small community of Jungholz, which belongs to Tyrol but can only be reached from Germany. “I am very happy that after a long struggle and discussion, the Kleinwalsertal communities and the Jungholz community are now excluded from the risk warning,” Federal Minister Müller commented.
Similar regulation for the entire border region?
However, it calls for the regulations for the entire border region between Germany and Austria to be tested. Because the problem that areas are also affected by a travel warning, in which there are hardly any cases of corona, does not only arise in Kleinwalsertal.
Uncertainty problem for the travel industry
The German travel association has long called for a classification that is not based on administrative limits but on the local situation. The association’s president, Norbert Fiebig, cites the Canary Islands, which belong to Spain, as an example: “Warning against traveling to all the Canary Islands if only one of the seven islands exceeds the critical limit is in no way appropriate or moderate. “said Fiebig.
A travel warning is not a travel ban. But if you go on vacation to a risk zone despite a warning, you must quarantine afterwards. There is “great uncertainty about what is and what is not possible among all those involved. This is a threat to the very existence of our economy,” said Fiebig, head of the association.
“You can climb three peaks in 48 hours”
The hotelier Störmer from Kleinwalsertal sees it in a similar way. “It remains a gamble for us if everything will turn out differently. We would like to see more precisely where there are a really high number of infections rather than the general travel advisory for entire areas.”
To lift the travel warning, he emailed: “We are taking off!” If the worst comes to the worst, you also know the loopholes in quarantine regulation, which many other hoteliers in Vorarlberg and Tyrol point out to their potential guests: those who have not been visiting for more than 48 hours are not subject to obligations of quarantine in most of the German federal states. “And in 48 hours you can walk a few miles, eat at least four cheese sandwiches and climb three peaks.”
Collaboration: Iris Marx, tagesschau.de
