Holiday route

Note on a holiday route

Baroque street logo

As a tourist route or tourist route or -route is in Germany, according to the ADAC , refers to a stable route with a special theme (1995) which has the purpose of the area of the route tourist market better. Other names are, for example, themed , tourist or tourist routes . A special form of such a street is the panorama street . This is a road that allows numerous views ( panorama ) of scenic beauties.

In Austria , holiday routes are also known as adventure routes .

features

According to a definition of the "German Tourist Association" from 1981, typical for holiday routes are:

A theme-based designation that makes sense in terms of landscape or culture
A permanent designation and marketing
A clear route without the use of motorways
A list of objects worth visiting along the route
The establishment of a central information point
Information material that is as multilingual as possible (maps, brochures)
Complete signage
The use of logos and slogans
A clearly responsible body with goals and tasks set out in the statutes
An effort to get state recognition in the form of funding or support.

In Germany, the official guide sign 386-51 in brown with white letters is used to mark holiday routes (size: 200 mm × 750 mm or 200 mm × 1000 mm), on which the logo of the respective street or a diamond without a logo is shown is. Signs referring to scenic routes may not be placed together with other traffic signs.

Holiday routes mostly do not coincide with the busy main routes of the region . Some of them have already been built as primarily tourist roads, and others have been created by marking existing roads accordingly. There are a total of around 150 holiday routes in Germany and over 60 adventure routes in Austria. About half of the German holiday routes are linear, about a quarter are ring-shaped and also a quarter are network-like. The longest holiday route, which runs exclusively within Germany, is the 1,738 km long German holiday route between the Alps and the Baltic Sea . Two thirds of all German holiday routes are shorter than 200 km.

Traveling on tourist roads turns out to be a mix of a visit to a building, a museum and a tour of the countryside or city, possibly combined with a visit to an event.

history

The oldest German holiday route is the German Alpine Road, founded in 1927 . The Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachians was built around the same time . These two streets already show how landscape experiences were staged for motorists on tourist roads and which conflicts arose due to the diverging interests in the "landscape". This is not an actually natural primal landscape, but one designed by people, whose perception is influenced by culturally determined constructs (such as travel guides , viewpoints and the most "scenic" lines of roads and paths).

By 1950, four other tourist routes were created in Germany, namely the German Wine Route (1935), the Black Forest High Road ( 1939), the Green Coastal Road (1946) (which is no longer marketed for tourists today) and the Romantic Road (1950). About 90% of all tourist routes were created during two waves of founding: The first wave of founding took place in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s, the second wave of founding in the 1990s, v. a. in East Germany.

In the beginning, tourist routes were mainly geared towards car tourists. Only in the 1990s did a change in meaning take place, with tourist routes increasingly opening up to alternative means of travel. The reason for this was u. a. the increased environmental awareness. However, the car is still the most popular mode of transport, especially for short vacations and weekend trips. Even today, many tourist routes can be driven by car and only partially can be experienced with alternative means of travel.

In 1999, the clay and brick road west of the Mecklenburg lake landscape was the only German project to receive the “To Do! Prize” from the “Ammerland Study Group for Tourism”, which explicitly promotes socially responsible tourism all over the world. Because the street is a "participatory project with a clear local and regional political orientation".

Marketing and Regional Policy

The initiators of holiday routes are often regions that strive to market themselves better as a tourist destination. Typical topics are landscapes , (former) regional trades or cultural heritage . The target group of a theme street are tourists interested in culture .

In Germany, holiday routes are defined as a bundle of services for supra- local marketing goals of urban and regional communities that work together in a public-private partnership ( PPP ). The legal form of organization of this cooperation is usually the registered association. The aims of the cooperation are to secure market shares, gain or retain certain target groups, improve the infrastructural utilization in off-peak tourist times or extend the tourist season as well as develop a national and international image. The aim is to bring the (also cultural) products of the region (s) closer to (potential) tourists in the form of cross-marketing .

Funding from the European Union , particularly under the LEADER program, is of central importance for the creation and operation of new scenic routes .

According to the " German National Tourist Board" (DZT) , these can only be successful in the sense of the initiators of a holiday route if the following basic factors are given:

Professional marketing from a central point
Clear orientation on guest benefits, especially on demand and not based on office hours
Closed service chains with an infrastructure that creates opportunities to spend money
Professional information and communication through signs, maps, brochures
Absolute willingness to cooperate on the part of all those involved
Constant further development and quality improvement through indoor marketing projects.

criticism

In Germany there are over 100 holiday routes, but only a few of them have made the general public aware of them - the actual goal, which is why some of these routes have been laid out at great expense. That is why the "DFMS Deutsche Ferienstraßen MarketingService GmbH & Co. KG" - an initiative in cooperation with ADAC and Hymer AG for the marketing of German tourist routes - has set itself the goal of reaching a broader audience at home and abroad better than before via the Offer to inform German tourist routes.

There are also holiday routes that are still marked on many maps but are no longer marketed. One example of this is the “Oldtimer Route” in the Osnabrück region. Some of the relevant stations for the construction of this route either no longer exist or have been moved to a location off the route. According to the GNTB, the principle applies that only systematically and continuously marketed roads are of benefit to your tourist region . In fact, only around a dozen streets in Germany deserve to be associated with the idea of proper marketing.