Overtourism vs. sustainability: return of tourists: the old conflicts are re-emerging on Sylt
For a long time, the motto on Sylt was waxing at all costs. The corona pandemic has now brought something to the surface that has been fermenting for a long time. For this reason, not everyone is happy that tourism is about to start up again.
It is still quiet on Sylt. With a few exceptions, trips to one of the Germans’ favorite islands have not been possible for months. After the ban on accommodation in spring 2020 and the rush of guests in the summer, operations had to be shut down again at the beginning of November.
Tourism on Sylt is to be ramped up again – but with what consequences for the island?
On May 1st, as part of the North Friesland model region, Sylt is slowly ramping up tourism again with strict requirements. Participation is quite controversial on the island and once again brings to the surface a conflict that has been fermenting on the island for a long time and boiled from zero to one hundred in the summer last year after tourism picked up. The Corona crisis has changed life on the island for a long time and has reinforced the call for a new quality of tourism, writes the head of Sylt Marketing, Moritz Lust, in the publication “Kurs Sylt”. That is a fact.
The island is 99 square meters and a third is covered with dunes. Ten nature reserves are spread over around 50 percent of the island’s area. There are twelve places on Sylt: The municipalities of Kampen, List, Hörnum and Wenningstedt-Braderup, as well as the municipality of Sylt, to which the places Westerland, Tinnum, Keitum, Archsum, Morsum, Rantum and Munkmarsch belong. Almost 20,000 people live on the island. Thousands of people commute to work from the mainland to Sylt every day. Many because living space on the island is expensive.
961,000 visitors to Sylt in 2019
From luxury hotels to campsites and youth hostels, from star restaurants to fish sandwiches, whether nature lover, surfer, gourmet or golf player, there is something for everyone on Sylt. The number of guests has almost doubled in the past 30 years: from just under 522,000 in 1990 to around 961,000 in 2019. At the same time, the average length of stay has fallen from 10.3 to 7.45 nights, as statistics from the municipalities show.
“This leads to an imbalance in the relationship between locals and guests as well as second home owners,” says Keitum goldsmith Birte Wieda, who, together with fellow campaigners, founded the citizens’ network “Merret is enough – out of love for Sylt” last year.
“This problem of alienation becomes all the greater the more you discover that it is no longer the locals who are building and managing new accommodation establishments, but rather foreigners – increasingly even impersonal investment funds. The people of Sylt themselves have not benefited from overtourism for a long time, ”says Wieda. Rather, large and small real estate investors from everywhere took advantage of the added value on the island: “The capital is built up and skimmed here.”
Construction boom for tourists – but housing shortage for locals
The chairman of the Sylt Entrepreneurs Association, Karl Max Hellner, however, emphasized that most of the people of Sylt lived mainly from tourism. “We need the holiday and day guests for our economy, without them the island cannot survive.” The question is, “whether the masses of people in midsummer still deal with our own ideas about lifestyle, how we interact with each other and the new freedom – and connect ecological thoughts ”. It is a pity that there is now more emphasis on quantity than quality. This was particularly noticeable in the past year, when every booking gap, no matter how small, was filled.
The island’s popularity with tourists has led to a construction boom and an explosion in property prices. Thatched-roof holiday homes, exclusive holiday apartments and huge luxury hotels costing millions of euros have been and are still being built in many island locations. What has been missing for decades is affordable housing for locals. “The construction boom on Sylt is unbroken, but the result is a housing shortage – that seems absurd,” says Wieda from “Merret’s enough”. “Today we would say that the economy that drives us is the construction and investment industry.” Too much permanent living space is still being converted into second homes and holiday homes.
And even if the efforts to build municipal Apartments for locals have increased recently, an estimated 100 homes are lost each year as a result of the conversion to vacation properties. The mayor of the municipality of Sylt, Nikolas Häckel, told the “Sylter Rundschau” in December 2020, referring to a study, that the completion of municipal permanent housing is only sufficient to approximately compensate for the number of permanent homes lost through conversion into holiday or second homes.
“Sustainability is the top priority for life and tourism on the island”
Another problem is traffic. Especially on the traditional days of arrival and departure, reports of hours of waiting at the car loading stations in Niebüll and Westerland are among the classics in traffic radio. Equalized arrival days could relieve the situation. In the opinion of many on the island, a real solution is primarily less cars, more offers in local public transport and an improved bicycle infrastructure.
The entrepreneur Hellner firmly believes “that we can do it and in the course of time we will deal better with the island’s resources and tourism”. It will be difficult to turn the wheel or to redefine it for Sylt, but not impossible. Sustainable tourism, resonance tourism, deceleration, permanent living space, traffic concepts such as the expansion of the cycle path network and the development of properties are important topics. And Wieda also thinks, “Sustainability is the top priority for life and tourism on the island”.
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kas / dpa