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From beach apps to day trip bans: The planned measures for German seaside visitors

Tourists are returning to the popular North and Baltic Seas. Here are some of the measures you can expect if you're looking to dig your toes into the sand this summer.

Published: 18 June 2020 11:03 CEST
From beach apps to day trip bans: The planned measures for German seaside visitors
Kampen in Schleswig-Holstein on June 11th: A sign with the inscription “At a distance - at least 1.5 m - we stay healthy! Help us!" Source: dpa

A reservation app for trips to the beach is currently being discussed in the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, while day visitors to the East Frisian Islands are being turned away. In both cases, the goal is the same: to enable a safe trip with sufficient distance in corona times.

Even if the public holidays in May were mostly calm, reports of full beaches, such as those on the island of Sylt and in the coastal town of Scharbeutz, have gained a lot of attention.

The Mayor of Scharbeutz was forced to turn away day trippers to the Bay of Lübeck on Whit Monday afternoon and, two days earlier, over a hundred people queued for the toilet at the Kampener beach crossing in Sylt. 

READ ALSO: Booming and bustling: How is tourism impacting Germany's Baltic Coast?

Seaside solutions

In order to control the streams of holidaymakers and day visitors expected over the summer, the tourist destinations on the North and Baltic Seas are coming up with various solutions: from parking guidance systems, floor stickers with distance rules, one-way street systems on the beach, to beach apps.

Schleswig-Holstein has also been implementing digital solutions to prevent the gathering of large numbers of people in holiday resorts and on beaches. A so-called beach app is currently being developed for the Bay of Lübeck.

It won’t be a proper app, but an internet platform which works like an online booking system for theatre seats, explained spokeswoman for the Lübeck Bay Tourism Agency, Doris Wilmer-Huperz.

Day tourists will be able to see which beach section is already full and for which they can still book a ticket. But holiday makers who have booked a stay in one of the participating destinations, as well as residents and second home owners, will still be allowed to visit the beach as normal.

“It is a service for day tourists,” said Wilmer-Huperz. This way, you avoid the frustration of leaving Hamburg early in the morning only to find that you’re not allowed to go on the beach.

21.05.2020, Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck-Travemünde: Only a few beach chairs are occupied on the East Sea beach. Photo: DPA

Compliance with the social distancing rules is more difficult on narrow beaches such at those which are popular with day visitors on the Bay of Lübeck than, for example, on the North Frisian Islands or in St. Peter-Ording.

On such beaches, which are wide enough for people to avoid each other, the need for such an app is in dispute, with Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of Tourism Bernd Buchholz (FDP) having explicitly stated that there is no obligation to introduce the app.

Usedom and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also have no plans for implementing a beach app. On the island of Usedom, things seem almost the same as they were before corona: queues of cars on the streets, lots of walkers on beach and promenades, cyclists, packed street cafes.

“Our beaches are full,” says Nadine Riethdorf, President of the Usedom Tourism Association and there won’t be any access restrictions: “the beach is a common property.” She has not yet experienced any issues with the 1,5-meter distancing rule. Unlike in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is still prohibiting entry for day visitors from other federal states.

Ban on day-trippers

The East Frisian islands like Norderney and Borkum also have no plans to introduce guidance systems or beach reservations. “We still have a restriction: the ban on day tourists,” said the managing director of the East Frisian Islands tourism company.

“As long as we don't have day tourists, we basically have no problem with over capacity on the beach,” especially since the beaches are large enough to place beach chairs at a sufficient distance, he said.

As with the rest of Lower Saxony, there has been gradual easing of the restrictions on these islands: first holiday apartments were allowed to be rented, then holidaymakers were allowed to stay in hotels.

The Mayor of the city of Norderney, Frank Ulrichs thinks that the ban on day trip visitors should still continue, explaining: “when the weather is nice, there are hundreds and hundreds of people on the beach.” On some weekend days, there can be up to 10,000 visitors.

Karlshagen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on June 9th: Bathers enjoy the hot early summer weather in Karlshagen. Photo: DPA

Bans on day visitors were also in place over the May public holidays on the North Frisian Islands and in St. Peter Ording. According to the authorities this worked quite well, although no such restrictions are currently planned for the tourist hotspots in Schleswig-Holstein.

'Individual responsibility'

It is clear, however, that the situation should continue to be closely monitored. “We can’t have everyone lying close together like sardines,” Schleswig-Holstein's Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU) recently told the Tagesspiegel.

The head of tourism in Rostock-Warnemünde, Matthias Fromm, is happy with the start of the season: “It's nice to be able to be hosts again.” He is aware that pictures of the crowded Warnemünde promenade provoked debate about security, but a strict procedure against violations of social distancing rules is unrealistic.

“Even if we have beach guards and the police, it still remains up to the individual responsibility of our guests.”

“We rely on everyone involved in tourism to treat each other with respect and responsibility,” says Ulrich Langer, chief of tourism in Kühlungsborn. That also applies to the beach. “People can avoid each other if they want to,” says Langer. “But you have to want it too.”

 

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TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Published: 23 August 2023 11:36 CEST
Updated: 26 August 2023 18:32 CEST
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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