UK Edition
This Austrian village inspired a Disney fairytale – but now it’s living a nightmare
This week, Hallstatt residents took to blocking off the entrance to the picturesque village in a bid to stop rampant overtourism
It’s impossible to imagine a more ridiculously pretty vision than Hallstatt, with the rugged Dachstein Mountains whooshing above its glass-green lake, cliff-hugging chalets and slender-spired church. It’s the kind of Alpine fantasy a child might draw. A scene sprinkled with fairy dust.
Blanketed in winter snow, it’s easy to see why this village in Austria’s Salzkammergut region apparently inspired the kingdom of Arendelle in Disney blockbuster Frozen.
But has mass tourism broken its spell?
In recent years, global fame has brought a tsunami of selfie stick-wielding tourists from around the world, most flocking here for a brief glimpse of that Instagrammable backdrop. Both Frozen and South Korean TV drama Spring Waltz, released on Netflix in 2006, have put the village firmly on the radar for Asian tourists.
In China’s Guangdong Province, they’ve gone a step further by creating a full-scale replica of Hallstatt, complete with market square, parish church and cutesy, brightly painted chalets – a knockoff to the tune of £754 million.
Back in Austria, visitor numbers have gone through the roof – up from 100 a day in 2010, to 10,000 in 2023.
Nerves are fraying, and Hallstatt’s 800 residents are fed up. There are tourists flying drones, unthinkingly entering their homes to use the toilet, creating noise and clogging the once-peaceful streets. The majority are day-trippers, contributing precious little, so it’s mostly tour and coach companies, some operating out of Salzburg, just over an hour’s drive away, that are cashing in.
Like many World Heritage sites, Hallstatt has become a victim of its own beauty. The boost tourism initially gave to the economy has gone from blessing to curse.
Hallstatt is, of course, not alone. Many European beauty spots – from Pulpit Rock in Norway to Burano, Venice in Italy, Oia on Santorini and Jungfraujoch in Switzerland – have suffered a similar bubble-bursting fate as visitor numbers have spiralled out of control.
For years, local mayor Alexander Scheutz has sought ways to cap those numbers, introducing limits on the number of buses and cars, but it has done little to detract people, with a million tourists a year descending on the village in search of a quick fix of the Austrian dream.
In May 2023, locals finally decided to take matters into their own hands and erected a fence to block off the sensational Alpine views and prevent visitors from snapping Frozen selfies. The hope was that this would reduce visitor numbers, but the fence was taken down following social media backlash.
Last week, things reached boiling point when around 100 residents protested against overtourism by blockading the mountain tunnel leading to the village, waving banners and placards with slogans like “We need to protect our living space”, “Please think of our children” and “Everything for tourists, nothing for us”. Residents want to limit daily visitors and introduce a 5pm curfew for tour buses, meaning at least they get their evenings in peace.
Scheutz agrees that things cannot continue as they are and has admitted that Hallstatt can only “handle half” of its current visitor numbers. One idea being floated is the possibility of selling ticketed time slots to visitors and closing bookings once the maximum number has been reached.
There are examples of how this can work in the UK, with picture-book villages like Clovelly in North Devon and Portmeirion in North Wales charging entry, as well as worldwide models at Unesco World Heritage sites like Machu Picchu. But should this come to fruition, it will need to be carefully managed.
The bigger question is one of sustainable tourism, perhaps. Hallstatt locals don’t mind people visiting, but they aren’t fond of the kind that take a quick snap and rush off, without appreciating the place and understanding its heritage.
Birthplace of the Hallstatt Culture that flourished in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, Hallstatt is more than a pretty face, after all. A funicular glides up into the mountains and Salzwelten, with a 7,000-year history that makes it the world’s oldest salt mine. Many day-trippers, too busy vying for photo ops by the lake, never make it that far.
But rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, Hallstatt might be wise to consider a selective ticketing approach, charging day-trippers an entry fee, say, but not those staying overnight (or ideally, several nights), thereby encouraging a sustainable tourism model. One thing is for sure, if this fairytale village is to have a happy ending, it’s time that tourists wised up to the fact that Hallstatt isn’t a Disney fantasy, it’s real. And that has to be respected.