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The idyllic alpine valley on which the Austrian town of Hallstatt sits looks like a fairy tale come to life, to the point that visitors are struck by its resemblance to the fictional frozen kingdom of Arendelle in Disney’s “Frozen. “
But for locals tired of the influx of tourists on a day looking for the best Instagram photo at this World Heritage site, the truth is a little less charming.
“Let’s stop the traffic madness, this makes us sick,” read a sign hung among protesters who blocked the large tunnel leading into the city last weekend. “Everything for tourists, nothing for us,” reads another.
“We have too many tourists right now and we want to find answers to the number of visitors,” Hallstatt Mayor Alexander Schutzz told NBC News.
Located on the shores of Lake Hallstätter in the Austrian Alps, the city has a permanent population of around 750 inhabitants and yet welcomes more than 10,000 visitors a day, many of whom come from Asia.
Located between the lake and a steep mountainside in Austria’s dizzying Salzkammergut region, the town is only accessible via a road, which can be crowded during peak tourist season.
Friedrich Idam, 62, a resident of Hallstatt, said citizens felt the desire to protest against this “avalanche” of mass tourism.
“Hallstatt no longer lives on tourism, but on overpopulation,” he said.
This alpine idyll is one of many photogenic and crowded sites across Europe where tensions between citizens and tourists have reached a boiling point.
“We think it only happens in Venice or Barcelona, but it doesn’t, it will be seen all over the world,” said Xavier Font, an expert in tourism and sustainability at the University of Surrey in southwest England.
“This organization of other people in Austria just organized and said ‘enough is enough’. And they are right to say so. In some parts of the world, other people are deficient and have to endure. “
Hallstatt was featured on a Korean TV show in 2006, prompting a wave of hype on social media. City officials said tourists from 87 countries have registered as visitors so far this year, adding many from the United States.
American tourists tend to stay overnight in the country, while others prefer to take a day trip, citizens said.
As for the intended ties to Disney’s “Frozen,” despite the valley’s striking resemblance to the film’s landscape, the filmmakers said they modeled their fictional kingdom on Norway. Its plot is based on “Frozen”, through the Danish fairy tale Hans Christian. Andersen.
The picturesque city was so popular with Chinese tourists that in 2012 a Chinese company built a life-size reproduction of the Austrian city in remote Guangdong province, at an estimated cost of $940 million.
However, the Hallstatt Tourist Board states on its English-language website: “But only in the original is you notice this really unique culture with so much history, all in a stunning mountain setting. “to foreign visitors that the local government now seeks to restrict.
After tour participants were forced to book compromised slots before arriving on tour buses, activists are now also calling for limiting the number of personal and hiker vehicles per day.
In 2019, about 90 tour buses arrived every day. With the advent of the reservation system, the municipality now receives an average of 30 to 35 buses per day, Mayor Scheutz said.
“In our small community, we have created 450 parking spaces and we have 12 full-time workers who are in charge of traffic management,” he said.
Millions of people have already taken photographs in Hallstatt’s stunning surroundings, which the tourist office describes as “one of the most beautiful in the world. “
“But only early in the morning and in the afternoon, when the day’s tourists have left, can you discover the original environment of the village at that time,” said Scheutz, a Hallstatt resident.
Idam, who moved to Hallstatt as a student in 1976, said that because “our central market is overrun with tourists, we now hold our weekly farmer’s market in a hidden place for residents. “
Tourism accounts for more than 6% of the Austrian economy, but restrictions on the closure of hotels and restaurants abroad due to Covid-related restrictions have had a significant negative effect.
Since then, Austria has observed an upward trend in the number of tourists, with a total of 39. 5 million overnight stays in the first part of this year’s summer season, between May and July, an increase of 1. 7% compared to 2019.
After the “quiet era of the pandemic,” tourist numbers began to skyrocket last year, Schetutz said, adding that “Hallstatt has a brand. “
Many citizens wish that this should not be the case.
“Hallstatt is just the tip of the iceberg,” Idam said. With the rise of mass tourism, “an avalanche is moving our way,” he said.
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