Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
14th (1.4%) position, while Poland attracted only
0.6%, the Czech Republic 0.5% and Slovakia
0.3% of all Austrian holiday travels to other
countries (Statistik Austria, 2002). In 1996, shortly
after the end of hostilities in Croatia, the share
of Croatia was still only 5% while the shares
of Hungary (4.2%), Poland, and the Czech
Republic (0.8%) were higher than in 2001; 1.1%
of all Austrian holiday travels were to Slovenia,
0.3% to Slovakia (Statistik Austria, 2002).
Taking into account that travels to Croatia
and Slovenia are just approaching the level they
had in the late 1980s before the Yugoslavian
crisis, and that Austrian holiday travels to the
other four countries (Poland, Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Hungary) have even declined
between 1993 and 2001 in absolute numbers, it
becomes apparent that Austria is not a very
prosperous tourism market for its northern and
eastern neighbours.
In 2001, Austrians travelled to Croatia
mainly for seaside recreation along the long and
attractive coast, to Hungary for wellness and
health treatment in the plentiful spas and for
lakeside recreation at Lake Balaton, to Slovenia
for wellness and health treatment in spas, to
Poland for recreation, but also for theme and
study tours, to the Czech Republic for theme and
study tours and to Slovakia for theme and study
tours and recreation (Statistik Austria, 2002).
With day trips, the situation is certainly
different, although data are hardly available
and statements must be based on accidental
evidence. Most frequent are certainly shopping
tours to western Hungarian border regions, but
also to Budapest. Bratislava, the Slovakian
capital at 70 km distance from Vienna, attracts a
lot of Austrian shopping tourists, since large
shopping centres are open at hours rather
unusual in Austria. Also, the Slovenian border is
frequently crossed by Austrian day-trippers, less
so the Czech border.
international tourism market, and which are
the market segments in which competition will
be successful?
Austria hosted in the early 2000s no more
foreign overnights than in the late 1980s. This
stagnation in quantitative terms and as regards
the annual average (not in respect to revenues
and to winter season) may lead to the conclu-
sion that the fall of the Iron Curtain and the
advancing political and economic integration
of Central and Eastern Europe into European
structures thereafter has absorbed Austria's
potential growth in tourism. However, a closer
glance at the development of foreign over-
nights in Austria from the late 1980s up to
2004 shows that Austria took advantage of the
Yugoslavian crisis in the first half of the 1990s
by receiving tourists (mainly Germans) who
would otherwise have travelled to former
Yugoslavia. Later, in the second half of the
1990s and the early 2000s, it was rather
modernization problems in Austrian (summer)
tourism, new trends in the European market
not matched by the Austrian offer and the
growing weakness of the German market
than competition from the 'East' which caused
stagnation (see Zimmermann, 1994, 1998,
2001). A very similar quantitative develop-
ment in Switzerland, a country certainly less
affected by competitors in Central and Eastern
Europe and even unfavourably comparing
to the Austrian case, may be taken as a proof
of that.
The only two segments obviously affected
by 'Eastern' competitors were wellness/health
tourism as well as city tourism. In wellness/
health tourism, the modernization of spas in
western Hungary (Hévíz, Bük, Balf, Zalakaros
and some newcomers) and Slovenia (Rogaška
Slatina, Laško, Atomske Toplice, Radenci,
Dobrna) affected especially spas in eastern
Austria (Burgenland, Styria) and brought some
expansion plans to a halt. Further expansion,
especially in western Hungary, may cause fur-
therdamageontheAustriansideinamarket
that is already very tight. In city tourism, espe-
cially Prague (Praha) and Budapest compete
with Vienna, but expanding the offer to three
attractive destinations in close vicinity may also
have contributed to the relative stability of
Vienna's international tourism development
(see Lohmann, 2004; Seitlinger, 2004).
Perspectives After Enlargement
Central and Eastern European countries
as Austria's competitors at the
international tourism market
Will Central and Eastern European coun-
tries successfully compete with Austria in the
