As of: March 27, 2024, 8:00 a.m
By: Christof Schnürer
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Sad but true: holiday guests who want to see snow in Mittenwald often have to go up to the Karwendel in the so-called winter of 2023/2024 to experience the white splendor at over 2000 meters.
© Peter Kornatz
The 2023 tourism year in the Upper Isar Valley ends with a bearable minus.
There are a few reasons for this.
But one of the biggest factors of uncertainty is and remains the winter lottery in the Alpine world of Karwendel.
Upper Isar Valley
– “The winter wasn’t good.” Manuel Huber, the managing director of Alpenwelt-Karwendel-Tourismus-GmbH, doesn’t beat around the bush for long.
What else could he say in view of the rampant lack of snow, which made skiing fun on the cross-country ski trail or on the slopes over long distances impossible.
Winter just does what it wants.
“And you run after it all year round,” explains Huber.
But it was certainly not just the lack of snow that caused a small and therefore bearable decline in overnight stays in the three partner communities of Mittenwald, Krün and Wallgau in 2023 (
see tourism balance sheet 2023
).
There are a number of possible reasons for the decline.
Manuel Huber
“There are a number of possible reasons for the decline,” notes the Isartal tourism boss.
In this context, Huber naturally mentions the dilemma with Deutsche Bahn AG, which caused a lot of trouble in 2023 with the permanent closure of the railway line between Mittenwald and Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the partially suboptimal rail replacement service (we reported).
According to Huber, this also had a “deterrent effect” for one or two holidaymakers who wanted to travel by train.
Another specific feature of the Isar Valley is equally problematic for those responsible at Alpenwelt Karwendel.
“There are many companies that can only offer short stays to a limited extent,” Huber regrets, especially since the trend has been going in this direction for a long time.
The average length of stay in the Isar Valley has recently fallen from 5.1 to 41 nights.
The development of guest beds is and remains worrying.
While there were 7,700 between Simetsberg and Porta Claudia in 2015, this value fell continuously to 7,124 (2019) and currently to 6,820. So almost 900 night camps were lost within nine years.
Manuel Huber hopes all the more that at least one of the two planned hotel projects will be realized in Mittenwald in a timely manner.
“But we don’t just need high-priced businesses,” says Huber, promoting a healthy mix.
Looking at the tourism figures - 1.1 million overnight stays in the Karwendel Alpine World - it is also noticeable that there was a slight increase in guest arrivals - with the exception of Wallgau.
“The only bright spot is that we are still managing to reach people,” concludes the Alpenwelt managing director.
According to him, there is a huge marketing effort behind this.
Back to winter, which once again resembled a weather lottery and brought winter sports providers to the brink of despair.
Only 30 percent of overnight stays are generated in the supposedly cold months.
The focus is clearly on summer and autumn in the Upper Isar Valley.
A sentence from Huber during the Kranzberg symposium documents how much winter is now falling behind in tourism GmbH's advertising.
At the time, he said – and this is telling – that photographs of snow would no longer appear in PR releases.
True to the motto: Don't promise what you can't keep anyway.
For Manuel Huber, the closure of the Mittenwald ice stadium or the demolition of the indoor swimming pool, for example, is all the worse.
“We therefore lack alternatives in bad weather.”
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Tourism balance 2023:
Overnight stays (compared to 2022):
Alpenwelt Karwendel:
1,114,112 (1,145,339) minus 2.7 percent
Mittenwald:
532,332 (545,407) minus 2.4 percent
Krün:
460,047 (466,862) minus 1.5 percent
Wallgau:
121,733 (133,070) minus 8.5 percent
Guest arrivals
(compared to 2022):
Alpenwelt Karwendel:
227,700 (225,116) plus 1.1 percent
Mittenwald:
111,239 (108,806) plus 2.2 percent
Krün:
96,536 (94,914) plus 1.7 percent
Wallgau:
19,925 (21,396) minus 6.9 percent
Source: Alpenwelt-Karwendel-GmbH