Hotels opened as Austria restarts tourism industry

The Mayor of Austria launched the reopening of the tourism industry on Friday in a small public ceremony at the landmark Ferris wheel.

Mayor Michael Ludwig pushed a red buzzer to restart the city's giant Ferris wheel - an attraction that had been in constant use since the Second World War but closed for the first time in recent history due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hoteliers prepared for guests, but with many land borders still closed and international travel severely restricted, many hotels are looking at a difficult economic future.

Lisa Wisenthal who manages a boutique hotel in Vienna's hip 7th district is sure that reopening her hotel won't pay off economically in the coming months.

"But we have to look to the future" she said, adding "at some point you just have to reopen."

According to the Vienna tourism board, many hotels need to have at least 50% of their rooms booked in order to just break even.

For the next week the Altstadt hotel of Lisa Wiesenthal has merely 15 of its 60 rooms booked.

"The city hotels – there's no way to sugarcoat this – we depend very much on international guests, congresses, events, culture, et cetera," Wiesenthal explained.

As large scale events remain unlikely in the near future - so too does a return to normalcy.

(Representative Image)