MUNICH (dpa) – For many tourists, a mountain holiday turns into a test of personal endurance limits – three peaks in eight hours and the stamps from as many new lodges as possible in their hiking-pass in the evening.
But others are content only to sit on the terrace of their boarding house drinking coffee and fruit brandy and looking sniffily at the “knickerbocker brigade”.
A summer trip to the Alps can assume many forms. The international Year of the Mountains 2002 is intended to lead tourists to understand the Alps as a special region of culture and nature and “not simply as a place to indulge in sports,” says Stefan Witty, head of the environmental department of the German Alpine Club in Munich.
For instance, Witty says, it is desirable for tourists to show interest in the languages and customs of ethnic groups such as the Ladins in South Tyrol.
“We should not see the mountain solely as a piece of sporting equipment,” Eckart Mandler, chief executive of the European hikers’ hotels association, urges.
The association brings together 59 hotels in Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Mandler, a native of Irschen in Carinthia, particularly stresses the value of the mountains for emotional equilibrium: “You never have it far to a place of absolute peace and quiet.”
There are still many regions in the Alps that are undeveloped, especially in the western Alps, East Tyrol and the Carinthian Alps, where there are few skiing resorts.
Both Mandler and Witty regret, that tourists are taking less and less time for the Alpine experience. “People used to come for three weeks. Nowadays, they are often only a week here,” Mandler observes. He says this is recuperative neither for the individual visitor nor for the Alpine region and its residents.
The tourism managers of the Alpine countries also consider the Year of the Mountains as an opportunity to make their regions a stronger talking point once again by staging special events. The objective is to extend the season and make it more attractive for younger visitors, says Emanuel Lehner, head of the Austria Information Office in Berlin.
The Swiss are expressing self-confidence in the Year of the Mountains with the slogan “If mountains had a home, it would be Switzerland.” The 23-kilometres-long Aletsch glacier is one of the attractions that will be the focus of publicity. It has been listed on UNESCO World Heritage since the end of 2001.
The German state of Bavaria also wants to increase its number of visitors in the Year of the Mountains and is relying on the slogan The Desire for Nature.
The aim is to demonstrate the various recreational opportunities in the mountains, ranging from hiking, canoeing and climbing to environmentally-compatible mountain-biking, Sybille Wiedenmann from Bavarian Tourism Marketing says. More than 550 events are planned throughout the state for Bavaria Nature Tour Day on June 16 alone.
There is no doubt in Stefan Witty’s mind that a middle road for the Alps has to be sought between touristic exploitation on the one hand and cultural decay on the other.
“In many areas of the Alps we already have a higher population density today than in the Ruhr area, for example in the Inn valley. On the other hand, we are experiencing rural exodus in parts of the western Alps. What we need is a redistribution of tourism and each individual can contribute to this,” he contends.
