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Tourist terror as iconic Berlin balloon thrashed by winds

Sightseers in the German capital feared for their lives on Tuesday afternoon when the "Die Welt" balloon swayed out of control in strong winds.

Published: 4 May 2016 10:02 CEST

Tourist terror as iconic Berlin balloon thrashed by winds

The Die Welt balloon swaying in the wind. Photo: DPA

The Die Welt newspaper's hot air balloon is an iconic part of the Berlin skyline. It floats up to a height of 150 metres from a site near Checkpoint Charlie in the centre of Berlin, while always staying moored to the ground, giving visitors a spectacular view of the city.

But on Tuesday 20 tourists got the fright of their lives when the balloon got caught in strong winds. Some of them had to lie on the floor for 20 minutes before they finally reached safety.

According to eyewitnesses, people on board screamed as the balloon swayed around in the gusts.

Peter W., one of the passengers, told Tagesspiegel that “it felt like when an airplane suddenly drops.”

He insisted though that he had remained calm, saying he “trusted the technology”.

Of the 20 people on board, 11 of them were school children from Norway, along with their teacher, as well as six Germans and a pilot, Bild reports.

A blast of wind damaged the balloon when it had reached a height of 110 metres, as bad weather moved in against the expectations of the company which runs the tourist attraction.

The pilot ordered the guests to lie down on the floor. Meanwhile the ground team tried to bring the balloon safely back down to earth.

But at first they they failed to get it under control, and it swayed towards buildings in the vicinity.

“I thought it was going to crash into the roof of a house,” Marcel Lau, a passerby who witnessed the scene, told Bild.

Eventually the balloon was brought back to earth and the passengers all escaped without physical injury.

But the crying school children collapsed on the pavement under the shock of the experience.

According to Air Service Berlin, the company that manages the balloon, the passengers were never in danger.

“The pilot needed to stabilize the balloon in order to bring it safely to ground,” a spokesperson told Bild.

Berlin police seem to have a different view of the matter and have banned the balloon from flying until further notice.

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Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate).

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average.

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal.

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun.

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring.

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022.

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices.

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

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