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Selfie-taking Frozen fans overrun Austrian village

Postcard depicting the famous Hallstatt lakeside town in the Alps - iStockphoto
Postcard depicting the famous Hallstatt lakeside town in the Alps - iStockphoto

With its frozen vistas and sparkling lakes, the Austrian hamlet of Hallstatt is renowned as a real-world inspiration for Disney's hit musical Frozen.

But fame has brought unbearable levels of tourism to the 16th century settlement, which is inundated with selfie-taking tourists who seem more interested in their Instagram profiles than local businesses and culture.

Now, Hallstatt’s tourism chiefs are planning a campaign that they hope will put quality of tourism over quantity by limiting the number of visitors and encouraging them to support the local economy.

The new campaign, which is due to launch in May 2020, will cap the number of tourist buses to 50 per day, with tourist groups who spend their money on local restaurants and cafes will be given priority.

Visitors will also be asked to stay for at least two hours and twenty minutes, and to explore the hamlet’s true history - which has nothing to do with Disney princesses.

For example, the hamlet is home to a 7,000 year-old salt mine - the oldest in the world -

“Many visitors only have a short time and only come to take some pictures,” Michelle Knoll, the office manager for Hallstatt’s tourism board, told the New York Times, which revealed the new details on the campaign. 

“The number of tourists is simply too much.”

Tourists take photos in the town center on January 16, 2019 in Hallstatt, Austria. Hallstatt, known for its picturesque beauty and its location at the base of a mountain on Hallstatter See lake, is struggling to cope with large influxes of tourists throughout the year. - Credit: Getty/Andreas Gebert 
Tourists take photos in the town center on January 16, 2019 in Hallstatt, Austria. Hallstatt, known for its picturesque beauty and its location at the base of a mountain on Hallstatter See lake, is struggling to cope with large influxes of tourists throughout the year. Credit: Getty/Andreas Gebert

Some rogue tourists have wreaked havoc in Hallstatt, which has a population of just 780 people, since it became associated with Frozen.

The sheer quantity of tourists has also spiralled out of control, with up to 10,000 people descending on the Hamlet each day according to some estimates.

Churches have reportedly had to hire bouncers to shoo away tourists who were disrupting services by taking selfies.

And in some extreme cases, visitors were caught taking photographs of mourners at funerals.

The case illustrates how fame can bring unwelcome attention in the digital age, where obscure cafes or villages are propelled into stardom and then besieged by tourists who are only interested in using the place as a backdrop for their social media photos.

Hallstatt’s new tourism campaign was drawn up after its mayor Alexander Scheutz, urged tourists to stay away from the hamlet as their sheer numbers were destroying the fabric of daily life there.

"Hallstatt is an important piece of cultural history, not a museum,” he said earlier this month.

"We want to reduce numbers by at least a third but we have no way of actually stopping them."

In October, travel journalist Rachel Hosie bemoaned how the hamlet had been “completely ruined by selfie-taking tourists” in an article for Insider. 

“Everywhere I looked, people were taking selfies, and no one seemed to be appreciating the scenery at all,” she wrote.

“It felt like the whole village was a tourist attraction, and made me feel sad about how social media has changed the way we travel.”

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