Manfred Grubauer, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Linz Tourismus, opened yesterday’s press conference with the words “Two old men are disembarking”. In addition to the “gratifying” increase in the number of overnight stays, the upcoming farewell to Grubauer and tourism director Georg Steiner was the dominant topic there.
The latter will retire in March – the month in which he turns 65 – after 16 years as Linz Tourism Director. As already reported, Grubauer will then no longer stand as a candidate for the supervisory board, and entrepreneur Klaus Pippig and the former hotel manager Johann Kaiser will also resign.
In order to guarantee a certain degree of stability, as Grubauer says, three new members of the supervisory board have already been co-opted: hotelier and restaurateur Lisa Sigl, event manager Dieter Recknagel and jeweler Michael Mayrhofer. As co-opted members, they only have an advisory vote, but at the same time have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the topics in the tourism association.
“Vienna is having a harder time”
In order to be able to move into the new supervisory board in the time after Grubauer and Steiner, the three of them have to face the general assembly next year and the election of the supervisory board there. The newly elected members of the Supervisory Board then elect the new chairman and deputy from among themselves. The position of tourism director will be advertised, applications are possible until the end of August. In September, a hearing decides on Steiner’s successor.
Back to the tourism figures: In the first half of this year, 365,105 overnight stays were counted in Linz, almost as many as in the same period of 2018, when Corona was far from being an issue. It is questionable whether the record numbers from 2019 (with a total of 934,944 overnight stays) can be reached, but the corona-related low in 2020 and 2021 with a total of 403,223 and 512,768 overnight stays respectively has already been overcome.
Steiner’s conclusion: Linz is coming out of the crisis better than Vienna or Salzburg because it is less dependent on international guests. “It might have something to do with the fact that we did a very successful campaign last year,” says the director of tourism, alluding to the controversial “Linz is Linz” video (more on that below).
The business tourism, which has always been important for Linz in the past and is only slowly returning, can currently be well compensated for by domestic tourism and tourists from Germany, it is said. Cycle tourism enjoys uninterrupted popularity, and cruise tourism is picking up again. A drop of bitterness: the “below average” occupancy of the ships and the resulting lower number of guests. Another frequency bringer are the many festivals and events in the state capital.
If Steiner has his way, however, there is a lack of offers, i.e. parking spaces, for the booming mobile home tourism. Here one is “miserable” set up in Linz. (jp)
Source: Nachrichten
