Overtourism in Upper Austria

Last week, your humble author had the opportunity to do an interview for ZDF (Second German Television) in Hallstatt, Austria. This idyllic little town in Austria’s Salzkammergut region is not only home to the oldest salt mine in the world with 7,000 years of history, but also gave the name to the Hallstatt period, the predominant Western and Central European culture of Early Iron Age Europe (8^th to 5^th century BC). It also swarms with Chinese tourists all year round.

The reason for this is not only the fact that Hallstatt in Austria is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but because there is a second Hallstatt in existence – in China. A Chinese company build a 1:1 copy of much of the Austrian city in 2012 in a place in the Pearl River Delta, not far from Hong Kong, hoping to sell apartments there for rich Chinese looking for a holiday flat[…]

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Image: Hallsatt by Daniel Máslo Source: Flickr released under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)