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A small town in Austria is struggling with how to deal with its booming tourism.
Hallstatt, a village in the Salzkammergut region of the European country, has seen a huge increase in the number of people visiting in recent years, and can see up to 10,000 tourists a day,according to a reportfromThe Guardian.
Mayor Alexander Scheutz is saying he’d like the number of tourists visiting the lakeside town to decrease.
After a fire burned through a portion of Hallstatt’s waterfront in November, Scheutz temporarily closed roads into town and issued a statement for tourists to “stay away,” according toThe Times.
“It didn’t work, they came anyway,” he said.
Hallstatt shot to popularity among Asian tourists after it was featured on a South Korean travel show in 2006,The Sunpointed out, and receives more than 1 million visitors a year, Al Jazeerareported in October.
A Chinese mining company evenreplicatedHallstatt in the Guangdong province.
“In Hong Kong, we don’t have anywhere like this, just tall buildings and lots of people. Everyone knows Hallstatt, it’s famous,” one Chinese tourist toldThe Timesof the village, which has been dubbed the “most Instagrammable town in the world.”
Hallstatt has been rumored to be an inspiration for the fictional town of Arendelle in Disney’sFrozenmovies, and while the fairytale location is actuallybased on towns in Norway, Hallstatt does bear a resemblance to the snowy, lakeside landscapes featured in the animated films.
Hallstatt is not the first place to suffer from “over-tourism.”
In March, the United Nations’ World Tourism Organizationpublished a reporton the phenomenon, which looked at 18 cities ranging from London, England, to Dubrovnik, Croatia, to Venice, Italy.
The UNWTO said that challenges in cities with over-tourism include congestion at popular sites within the city, pressure on infrastructure and resources, and impact on residents’ daily lives, among others.
In Hallstatt, one resident who manages a local cafe toldThe Timesthat the tourists treat the town “like a movie set.”
A resident hotel manager added to the outlet, “the supermarket is basically a souvenir shop, it’s a real problem for old people to find fresh food.”
source: people.com
