Saturday 3rd July 2021
To reduce traffic jams
ADAC: expand the summer vacation corridor
The beginning of the holiday is associated with traffic jams for many drivers – just like the end of the holiday. The ADAC is now calling for an expansion of the time corridor for summer holidays in order to equalize the traffic on the main holiday routes. One thing is clear: After the tough Corona months, people want to travel again.
After the federal elections, the ADAC is calling for politicians to be much more committed to tourism and, at the same time, calling for an expansion of the time corridor for the summer holidays. “Tourism is in an existentially important phase,” said ADAC tourism president Karlheinz Jungbeck. “After the severe restrictions of the pandemic, people finally want to travel again – this opportunity must be seized.”
A restart after coping with the pandemic must also “be combined with answers to the megatrends of our time such as digitization, demographic change and climate change,” demanded Jungbeck. “For the coming legislative period, better coordination of tourism policy measures across all federal levels is particularly important,” he said.
Irrespective of this, Jungbeck believes that it makes sense to extend the time corridor for the summer holidays to 90 days: “During the summer holidays, there are regular outward and return journeys on individual weekends.” If the appointments were straightened out, there would be fewer traffic jams on the main vacation routes. In addition, the distributed demand would reduce the price pressure in the main season. The average time corridor is currently 84.6 days.
Criticism of German tourism policy
Jungbeck gave the tourism policy of the past few years a modest testimony. A lot of time has been lost. “From the point of view of the ADAC, the national tourism strategy falls short of expectations. There are no ambitious measures to get out of the pandemic.” It is also incomprehensible “that almost all parties treat tourism only superficially in their election programs and do not go beyond lip service.” It is seen that tourism is an important economic factor in Germany. “However, there is a lack of innovative concepts for the tourism of tomorrow, as well as measures for the future viability of the industry,” criticized Jungbeck.
The black and red federal government decided on a national tourism strategy in April 2019. Concrete measures should also be worked out in cooperation with the federal states. After the outbreak of the corona pandemic in spring 2020, crisis management was initially the order of the day. The Federal Ministry of Economics recently presented an action plan on the strategy. The German Tourism Association (DTV) criticized the plan as not being sufficiently concrete.
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