2.03 · The Town That Said No to Tour Buses

The Town That Said No to Tour Buses
Berglau is an invented Alpine village, but its story is based on real towns.

Berglau has 1,240 residents, one main street, one church and one family-run bakery. Three years ago, on busy summer days, it also had up to ninety tour buses a day. The village sits beside a turquoise lake under a snow-capped mountain, and a travel blogger once called it “Europe’s best-kept secret.” The secret got out. Drone videos of the lake reached forty million views, and one July the village welcomed more visitors than in the whole of the 1990s.

For local businesses, the numbers sounded like good news, but residents say it wasn’t that simple. According to a council study, day visitors spent an average of eleven euros each: a coffee, a fridge magnet, a fee to use the restrooms. Meanwhile, the crowds filled the main street from ten to four, and the bakery sold out of bread by noon. “We felt like extras in a movie about our own town,” says Anna Huber, who has run the bakery for thirty years. “In my view, that was the worst part.”

Two years ago, the council voted for an experiment that made national news. Tour buses now need a paid permit, and there’s a limit of twenty a day. Groups must book a time slot for the lakeside path, so the famous fifteen-minute stops (bus, photo, bus) have almost disappeared. The village also hired two rangers, opened new public restrooms and launched a website that shows, hour by hour, how busy the town is. Critics called the plan short-sighted and predicted disaster. The buses, they argued, would just go somewhere else, and they’d take their money with them.

The figures tell a different story. Since then, bus visits have fallen by 60%, but total visitor spending has fallen by only 8%. That’s because people who stay longer spend far more than people who stop for a photo, and hotel nights have actually gone up. The bakery now closes at its normal time with bread still on the shelves, which Anna calls “the strangest luxury of my life.” Still, not everyone’s happy. The souvenir kiosk by the parking lot has lost half its business, and two bus companies are challenging the permit fee in court.

“I’d argue that tourism is like rain,” says the mayor, Lena Gruber. “We need it, and we’re happy to welcome it, but nobody wants ninety storms a day. We aren’t against tourists. We’re for the village.” “Personally, I think Berglau looks better than ever,” says one hotel owner. “It’s quieter, cleaner and closer to its famous photos.”

Berglau isn’t alone. Since 2020, tour buses that visit Hallstatt, in Austria, have had to book a time slot in advance. In 2024, Venice began to charge day visitors a five-euro fee on some of its busiest days. Other crowded towns are watching closely.