There are people who come to Oberstaufen just because of the summit sauna in the Aquaria. It’s the most beautiful Allgäu here, this view from the so-called summit sauna of the thermal baths to the rock faces of the Nagelfluhkette, that’s something. People are happy to pay admission, and if the municipality has its way, day visitors should pay a little more in the future. Oberstaufen wants to collect a tourist tax from day guests, as it has done so far from overnight guests and also from second home owners. For example, this fee could be charged at the entrance to the local thermal baths. And that’s why there is now a need for discussion, not only in the Allgäu, but in many Bavarian tourist resorts.
Some speak of the “end of the welcome culture”, others of “milked guests”. “We agree with the majority of our committees that this will destroy a lot of things that we have built up,” says Klaus Fischer, managing director of the Tourismusverband Allgäu GmbH. Constanze Höfinghoff, on the other hand, doesn’t understand the excitement. As head of tourism in Oberstaufen, she is pushing the idea forward, not even as the first: Bodenmais in the Bavarian Forest charges 2.30 euros per day, and Kochel am See in Upper Bavaria has already made headway. And where Höfinghoff comes from, on the North Sea coast, a tourist tax on the beach is the most normal thing in the world. So Höfinghoff is a bit surprised about Bavarian sensitivities, she would like a less emotionally charged discussion. She says: “If we want to continue to provide quality in tourism, then we have to spread the costs over many shoulders.”
The tourism directors in the much-visited places like Oberstaufen are all concerned about the costs. In hardly any branch of the economy are profits privatized to such an extent, but costs socialized as in tourism. Almost every local rents to vacationers, so the expectations of the communities are high to provide a high-quality infrastructure. Which place with almost 8000 inhabitants like Oberstaufen already has a thermal bath? The tourism business there is in the red at six million euros, so it needs income. And they should now come from the 900,000 day visitors a year. “If we only catch 300,000 at checkpoints, we’ve already won something,” says Höfinghoff.
“We don’t build fences or barriers.”
She imagines that tourist tax is levied at popular tourist spots such as the thermal baths or the mountain railway. “Nobody intends to check pedestrian zones or hiking trails, we don’t build fences or barriers.” Nevertheless, Klaus Fischer from Allgäu GmbH fears that tourism will have an acceptance problem if locals from the neighboring town a few kilometers away are suddenly asked to pay tourist tax. And he fears that with a spa fee, day visitors will no longer come, which in turn would affect retail and gastronomy.
In Füssen, for example, they have so far decided against a tourist tax for day visitors. Tourism Director Stefan Fredlmeier sees the economic necessities, but he raises the question of justice if not every day visitor can be checked. In his view, the effort involved in collecting the fee would be disproportionate. And when is a day guest actually in town for the purpose of relaxation? “None of this fits with my idea of public space, in which one should move freely.” Tourism expert Fischer prefers to turn to municipal financial equalization in order to help the tourist resorts. Or increase the entrance fee to the thermal baths, for example, without charging a tourist tax. Then money comes in – but the external effect is different.
Faced with such arguments, Oberstaufen’s head of tourism, Höfinghoff, replies with an excursion into municipal tax law. Resort fees are earmarked, the municipality uses them to finance the maintenance of hiking trails, playgrounds or planting in the village. Everyone participates, the overnight guests with the resort tax, the community and thus the locals with their own contribution. Anyone who simply increases the entrance fee to the thermal baths, on the other hand, cannot use the income so easily for the infrastructure, especially when a municipality is in deficit. That’s why she doesn’t believe in simply increasing parking fees, as in the case of Königssee, where day trippers pay more than overnight guests.
A Bavaria-wide solution is not in sight
From their point of view, a spa fee for day visitors would be a contribution to justice: the costs for the tourism infrastructure would be shared, the locals would be relieved. The money could be used to improve public transport and finance visitor management for the benefit of nature. She does not see any legal problems like many critics. The Ministry of the Interior agrees with you as the supervisory authority, which sees no problems in collecting such a tourist tax as long as hiking trails remain freely accessible. And the experts in the ministry are also relaxed about the definition of day visitors: anyone who stays in a health resort is usually there for the purpose of relaxation and is therefore liable to pay a contribution – for the time being, the assumption is enough for the control. In the eyes of Klaus Stöttner, CSU member of the state parliament from Rosenheim and President of the Upper Bavaria-Munich Tourist Association, it is therefore completely legitimate for municipalities to involve day visitors in the costs of the local infrastructure.
However, a Bavaria-wide solution is far from in sight. The Economics Ministry, which is responsible for tourism, speaks of “individual decisions” that can only be made on the spot, but “with a sense of proportion” so as not to slow down the positive effects of excursion tourism. Hardly anything is as controversial in the tourist-heavy regions as day tourists. They clog the streets but leave little money in town. In the Upper Bavarian town of Kochel am See, the idea for the spa fee arose from the discussion about the masses of day-trippers who are mainly arriving from the greater Munich area. However, Mayor Thomas Holz would like to “vehemently contradict” the fact that the spa fee should possibly also annoy one or the other day-tripper.
The statute has been in force there since October. In the district office in Bad Tölz and in the Munich Ministry of the Interior, the lawyers bent over the text for a long time, after all, every citizen has the right to free access to nature. This right has been preserved with the regulation now in force, says Kochel’s Mayor Holz. Because the daily fee is not an admission ticket to the Kochelsee and Walchensee or for the Herzogstand and the Jochberg. According to Holz, a kind of user fee is charged for the municipal facilities of the spa, for example for the bathing lawns on both lakes. The guests can pay the fee at the tourist information – or buy it together with the parking ticket at the machine, because the municipality has recently started charging parking fees. The day ticket costs six euros – plus two euros daily spa fee for each adult and 1.50 euros for everyone between eight and 16 years of age.
There is a certain understanding of this among many guests, says Holz, but of course there are also a few complaints. So far nobody has complained. In any case, the mayor expects a greater steering effect less from the daily tax and more from the parking fees – but they have recently been introduced or increased in almost all excursion hotspots in the Upper Bavarian Alps. Without a first main season in summer, there is still no experience as to whether the visitor’s tax has any greater effect beyond the additional income for the community. The payment behavior for the daily tax, at least from the point of view of the municipality, has so far been comparatively pleasing.