Hallstatt, an idyllic mountain town in central Austria, has long been regarded as a textbook example for a phenomenon called overtourism. Not reflected in the limited number of registered overnight guests, day visitors to Hallstatt who spend an hour or less in the village account for more than 85% of the tourism arrivals. In 2019, 21,254 tour buses and 225,698 personal vehicles arrived in Hallstatt, which represent a sextuple and quadruple increase from 2010 figures, respectively (Marktgemeindeamt, 2020). For many residents, these sharp increases have exceeded the village’s capacity to manage them and contributed to sentiments of overtourism. This research takes a resident perceptions approach (Muler et al., 2018; Kuscer and Mihalic, 2019) to investigate the impact tourism is having on the village, and whether community stakeholders can perceive a reprieve in the number of tourists immediately after the onset of COVID-19 restrictions.

Accordingly, the study formulated two research hypotheses to evaluate residents’ perceptions:
H1: Community stakeholders are able to perceive a drop in the number of tourists a month after the ban on Chinese group travel due to the COVID-19 outbreak went into effect.
H2: The negative externalities caused by short-time visitors outweigh the benefits of this industry to the local population. A drop in these tourists’ numbers is beneficial across the village population, irrespective of employment in tourism industry.

The research administered a resident survey that was developed based on recent literature (Muler et al., 2018; Kuscer and Mihalic, 2019) to measure perceived tourism impact on the local Hallstatt community 28 days after the Chinese government banned group travel from China. Chinese tourists comprised 15% of the total booked overnight guests in 2019 and were perceived to occupy an appreciable percent of the day visitors in recent years (Obermueller, 2020). The questionnaire was designed to address pertinent aspects of tourism impacts and included 5-point Likert scale as well as sociodemographic questions asking for age, gender and if the respondent was employed in the tourism industry (Belisle and Hoy, 1980); (Glasson et al., 1997).

H1: The research reveals a dilemma of getting what you asked for and the double-edge sword tourism dependent communities must wield. Hallstatt is heavily dependent on tourism, 69 percent of all respondents are engaged in the tourism industry. Seventy-five percent of respondents had observed a decline since the beginning of February, and, as to be expected, people employed in the tourist industry were more aware of the decline than other residents (79 percent vs. 67 percent). The year 2020 began with another record-breaking January for Hallstatt, counting 979 tour bus arrivals, but immediately dropped 63 percent to just 622 for February. Based on previous trends, the projected number was over 1,600 tour buses for February. This acute break from the norm felt by three quarters of the surveyed residents substantiates the research hypothesis that community stakeholders are capable of perceiving the effects of tourism management policies, exogenous or not.
H2: Out of the people who observed a decline of tourists, the majority (67 percent of all respondents) were better off, with another 29 percent feeling no effect and only five percent feeling worse off. This lends weight to the propagated sentiment in the media that Hallstatt residents believed their village had exceeded its carrying capacity. Indeed, even out of the people working in the tourism industry, still a substantial share (60.0 percent) stated they were better off given the reprieve. Naturally, a larger share of other residents not employed in the tourism industry reported to be better off (83.3 percent).

This research takes a first look at the residents’ sentiments regarding tourism in the early stages of the COVID-19 situation. The actual drop in tourist numbers provided an unparalleled opportunity to see if a rural, tourism-dependent community plagued with overtourism could appreciate the change presented from without rather than within.
As Hallstatt quickly transitioned from from overtousim to undertourism, policymakers are confronted with the dilemma of defining an ideal status quo. Twenty-eight days after the onset of COVID-19, this research shows that residents’ community well-being increased. Over time, however, residents can begin resenting the reprieve they required.

The pandemic-induced break in tourism has granted Hallstatt a brief return to its idyllic past, and a chance to reevaluate its volatile gemeinschaft and gesellschaft equilibrium. Further research may show the fickle nature of measuring resident sentiments where a return to normality does not mean all or nothing, but a careful balance of maintaining the mutual interests of the whole community to give the village a tourism industry with measure and purpose.

Belisle, F. J. and Hoy, D. R. (1980). The perceived impact of tourism by residents: A case study in Santa Marta, Colombia. Annals of Tourism Research 7.1: 83–101.
Glasson, J., Godfrey, K., and Goodey, B. (1997). Towards visitor impact management: Visitor impacts, carrying capacity and management responses in Europes historic towns and cities. Avebury Publishing.
Koens, K., Postma, A., and Papp, B. (2019). Management strategies for overtourism from adaptation to system change. Overtourism: Tourism Management and Solutions. Ed. by H. Pechlaner, E. Innerhofer, and G. Erschbamer. Routledge.
Kuscer, K. and Mihalic, T. (2019). Residents’ attitudes towards overtourism from the perspective of tourism impacts and cooperation: The case of Ljubljana. Sustainability 11.6: 1823.
Marktgemeindeamt, H. (2020).
Muler, V., Coromina, L., and Gali, N. (2018). Overtourism: residents’ perceptions of tourism impact as an indicator of resident social carrying capacity: Case study of a Spanish heritage town. Sustainability.
Plichta, J. (2018). The Problem of Short-term Rental as a Manifestation of the Overtourism Effect on the Housing Market in the Historical City of Krakow. World of Real Estate Journal 106