Pandemic turns summer into lean season
Bruges mayor Dirk De fauw first realized something was desperately wrong with European tourism when on a brisk March morning he crossed the Burg square in front of the Gothic city hall and there was nothing but silence.
“There are always people. Always,” De fauw said. That morning? “Nothing. Nobody is on that large square” at the heart of one of Europe’s most picturesque cities, he said.
Six months later, as Europe’s leanest tourist summer season in recent history is starting to draw to a close, COVID-19 is yet to loosen its suffocating grip on the continent.
If anything the pandemic might tighten it over the coming months, with losses piling up in the tens of billions of euros across the 27-nation European Union, and the continent’s vaunted government support and social security system under increasing strain to prop up the sector.
The upheaval so far, the bloc’s executive European Commission said, shows that “revenue losses during the first half of 2020 for hotels, restaurants, tour operators, long distance train operators and airlines were roughly 85-90%.” No country has been exempt in an area spanning from Greece’s beaches to the trattorias in Rome and the museums of Paris.
And even now, the European Commission told The Associated Press, “bookings for September and October remain abnormally low,” as dire as 10% of capacity in Bruges. It dents hopes that a brief uptick in business in July would be a harbinger of something more permanent.
Over the summer, though, came fresh spikes in COVID-19 contamination, especially in Spain and France, new restrictive measures and regional color codes that spelled disaster for local tourism when they turn red.
It left the European tourism industry relying on hope more than anything else. That was evident on a late summer’s day in Bruges, when usually throngs of American, Asian and European tourists stroll along the cobblestone streets below the city’s gabled houses, bringing annual visits to over 8 million in the city of 110,000.
“The swans have it all to themselves,” muttered Michiel Michielsens as he slowed his boat behind a bank of swans on a city canal. On a normal day — not like the one when he had 114 customers instead of 1,200 — tourists instead of birds would rule the waters. Now a boat could be seen showing a single couple around instead of its normal load of 40 people.