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These are the travel plans that could make it into Germany’s new lockdown pact

One of the central points of discussion at Monday’s lockdown talks will be the extent to which people in Germany will be able to travel freely during the long Easter weekend. A leaked proposal by the Social Democrats lays out how that might happen.

Published: 22 March 2021 10:11 CET
Updated: 22 March 2021 16:49 CET
These are the travel plans that could make it into Germany's new lockdown pact
Germany's Baltic coast. dpa | Bernd Wüstneck

With Easter less than a fortnight a way, many of us want to know whether we can plan a short break. The draft lockdown agreement contains some clues.

Should we expect a special Easter rule?

Maybe.

At Christmas, the 16 German states made special exemptions to allow families to meet in small groups despite the fact that the country was at the peak of the autumn wave of coronavirus infections.

The importance of the religious holiday to German society was highlighted as the reason for creating this exemption.

Easter doesn’t play such a central role in family life as Christmas in Germany, as it is traditionally a time when one goes on holiday.

Nonetheless, a leaked proposal by the Social Democrat (SPD)-led states makes clear that there will be discussions on how to facilitate respite during the four-day Easter weekend, which starts on Friday April 2nd.

Stay in your state

The proposal describes a “limited contact holiday” in which people would be able to stay in holiday homes or caravans within their own federal state. A condition for a holiday let opening is that it can provide toilets for a single household.

Short term rentals and hotels have been closed to everyone except business guests since November. 

The proposal has nonetheless been put in parenthesis, meaning it isn’t likely to be the bridge the SPD are going to die on in Monday’s talks.

Politicians from Angela Merkel’s CDU party have already voiced scepticism at the proposal as they believe it would face problems in court. A similar attempt to limit overnight stays to people from within a federal state was overturned by several courts in the autumn.

Even in the SPD, there are those who don’t want to encourage travel at Easter.

The vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at the weekend that “from my point of view, there had better not be a big wave of travel at Easter. We simply cannot afford that in the current situation” 

“If too many people were to take Easter holidays on a large scale, it would endanger the summer holidays for all of us,” Scholz told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

It is almost certain that the new agreement will continue to contain an appeal to people to “avoid all but necessary travel at home and abroad.”

It is unclear whether visiting family in another federal state over Easter will be explicitly discouraged. This clause can’t be legally enforced, but rather is a recommendation.

Escape to Mallorca?

The first budget airlines started flying to Mallorca at the weekend, after lower case numbers there led the Foreign Ministry to remove the Balearic islands from its list of high risk countries.

The fact that people are going on holiday abroad while cases rise again so quickly has caused considerable controversy.

A topic of hot debate at Monday’s talks will be whether to insist that people quarantine on returning from the Spanish islands. This proposal was first made by that influential Bavarian state leader Markus Söder.

READ MORE: German states seek Covid restrictions extension into April as case rise continues 

The SPD paper not explicit about what to do with tourists coming home from Mallorca. It states vaguely that “the emergence of various coronavirus variants and their global spread have demonstrated the need to continue to limit cross-border travel to the absolute minimum necessary.” 

But another draft of the agreement, this one directly out of Merkel’s office, states that people arriving from abroad would have to take a PCR test and go into quarantine, regardless of the infection scenario in the country they have arrived from. But that point is in parentheses, meaning it is not guaranteed to make it into the final proposal.

READ ALSO: ‘Not an invitation to go there’: Germany urges against Mallorca holiday following lifting of travel warning

Tourism industry upset

The German tourism industry says that mandatory testing for people arriving from low risks regions would put needless burden on health authorities.

The German Travel Association (DRV) points out that the 7-day incidence on Mallorca is currently less than 20, and strict regulations apply there. “When returning to Germany, there is no increased risk of infecting others, but rather a greatly reduced one,” DRV boss Norbert Fiebig said.

Marek Andryszak, managing director of TUI Germany, also believes that the dangers of travel to Mallorca have been exaggerated.

“Mallorca is in demand, but not overcrowded,” he said. “Of the 1,000 hotels open in high summer, not even 10 percent will be available at Easter.”

SEE ALSO: German doctors call on government to end ‘irresponsible’ easing of lockdown as virus spread accelerates 

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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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