Fasting hotels, which in general are increasing due to the increasingly fast-loving society and are filling up splendidly these days in particular due to the fact that the carnival season has passed, fasting hotels are only silent representatives of an increasingly booming renunciation tourism.
Of course, despite Covid, the gluttons at the hotel and cruise buffets are not yet threatened with extinction, but those who really want to treat themselves to something when traveling these days treat themselves as little as possible. “You should do without! You should do without”, Goethe said more than two centuries ago in “Faust”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/reise/. “The daily room service is annoying, superfluous and not up to date”, it said more than two years ago in the world. And because the tourism industry has long since figured out that more money can be earned with less service, the new salutary rule of three is: reduce, shut down, switch off.
This does not only apply to fasting hotels, where the detoxifying vegetable soup and crispbread are cleverly embedded in a sinfully expensive all-round carefree package, where you can ask yourself when you do the exact calculation what exactly cost 1099.20 euros: the spartan room ? The daily walks in solitude? Or the apple when breaking the fast?
Elsewhere, doing without fresh towels and daily room cleaning are often sold as an eco-concept instead of as a cost-saving measure. And because the free WiFi in accommodation, on the beach, in the ski lift, oh: everywhere, has meanwhile atrophied into the all-inclusive buffet of the entertainment industry, digital detox hotels and offline trips are now promising social media cures and mobile phone Fast. A house in Carinthia, for example, has raised “Alpine Slowness” to a marketing concept, whereby the smartphone waiver sounds like this: “We have something new for the very courageous guests!” Switch off as an adventure.
“Giving up is an expression of inner freedom. And that’s part of our dignity,” said Anselm Grün. He is a business economist and a Benedictine priest and as such a well-versed person in questions of fasting. The question is already in the air as to whether renunciation is true dignity, the new luxury when travelling, although one should perhaps assume that it is a luxury to be able to afford renunciation and dignity.