Winter season: A fifth less than before the pandemic
tourism
The winter season that is coming to an end has brought about a drop of around one fifth compared to the pre-crisis level. This shows a first summary of the Salzburg winter network, in which cable cars and other tourism companies are organized.
Above all, the uncertain start to the season and the January hole would have caused losses that could not have been made up for by the good end of the season, it is said.
Lockdown at the beginning of the season, total failure in January
With a lockdown at the start of the winter season at the end of November, plus travel restrictions, especially from Germany during the Christmas holidays, the past winter season got off to a bad start for domestic tourism. According to the industry, January was also a total failure.
It wasn’t until mid-February that there was a significant recovery
It was not until mid-February that there was a significant recovery with the relaxation of the CoV measures and travel rules. All in all, there is still a minus, says the spokesman for the Salzburg cable car industry, Erich Egger.
“Depending on the origin of the vacationers, there was a drop in overnight stays in the individual winter sports regions of between 20 and 30 percent compared to the level before the outbreak of the CoV pandemic. In the case of the cable cars, we are down between 17 and 20 percent in terms of first entries compared to the last full winter season before the outbreak of the CoV pandemic.”
Banker: “Tourism businesses are still financially secure”
Thanks to state aid, tourism companies are still financially secure despite this decline, says Heinz Konrad from Raiffeisen Salzburg. “It has to be said that the tourism companies actually survived the two years of the CoV pandemic relatively well. In the case of the ‘disaster winter’ of 2020/2021, however, one has to admit that the support provided by the federal government was a very, very big help.”
For the summer and especially the coming winter, tourism professionals are hoping for good planning of the CoV restrictions and, above all, for no more short-term lockdowns.