BRUGES, Belgium — A couple of years ago, officials in this medieval Flemish gem were worried about Bruges becoming a tourist trap; now they’re terrified that visitors won’t be back.
Before the pandemic, 8.3 million people a year visited the Unesco world heritage site. But nowadays, Bruges is almost deserted.
“In 2019, we had days with up to 50,000 or 60,000 visitors, while only 20,000 live in the city center,” said Bruges Mayor Dirk De fauw. “We had to find a way to avoid Bruges becoming overwhelmed with tourists.”
It’s a problem because Belgium, which has been hammered by the pandemic, is under tight local COVID restrictions and was also hit by flash floods earlier this summer. That’s laid waste to the country’s tourism sector.
While Belgium may not be a touristic rival for Greece and Spain, cities like Bruges in Flanders, Durbuy in Wallonia and Brussels normally attract scores of visitors from abroad. After a catastrophic 2020, there were hopes that the pandemic would lift and foreign tourists would come flocking back. But that hasn’t happened. In the first four months of 2021, Belgium saw 81.6 percent fewer foreign tourists.
Instead of big spending tourists from the U.S., China and Japan, businesses are having to rely on short-term visitors from neighboring countries like the Netherlands and Germany — and even many of them are being scared away by travel restrictions.
Risaz Nicolag, who runs a Bruges souvenir shop, has strategically positioned a stack of umbrellas in the doorway. He has had some luck selling them to Dutch customers, but the lack of overseas tourists is bad for business.
“July and August are normally the best months, but European tourists don’t generally buy these kinds of souvenirs,” he said. “They spend their money on restaurants or museums.”
Peter De Wilde, who leads the Flemish government agency for tourism, said recovery is a long way off.
“We don’t expect the same number of business events until 2023, and we don’t expect the same [level of] overnight stays until 2025 or even 2026,” he said. He feels the impact of the pandemic will end up being even more cataclysmic than the 2016 terrorist attacks. “The aftermath of the attacks struck the tourism sector very hard, but a year later the numbers were the same as before,” he said.
Making up for lost numbers
The lack of international tourists is also bad news for Brussels. “This is a disaster for our hotel sector, which is barely 20 percent occupied,” said Fabian Hermans, director of the Brussels federation of hotels, restaurants and bars.
Bruges still sees a lot of day visitors to local restaurants, bars and shops, but hotels are struggling: In 2019, German, French and Dutch tourists booked 3.5 million nights in Bruges’ hotels; it was a third of that last year.
“We have thought about giving up several times since the pandemic,” said the owner of a small family hotel in the center. She asked to remain anonymous so as not to upset city officials she accuses of not doing enough to support local hotels.
Most of her customers are Belgian, as other European tourists still struggle with travel restrictions. “Each country has its own rules that constantly change,” she said. “People don’t want to risk quarantine when they get back. For me, this pandemic has proved that there is no Europe. If it does not work at such a key time, then why does it exist at all?”
Deadly floods
As if the pandemic weren’t enough, the country was hit by floods that killed dozens of people in mid-July. Wallonia saw dozens of buildings washed away plus families needing to be relocated, households lost gas and electricity, and tons of garbage are still waiting to be cleared.
The region will take time and money to recover, hurting the already struggling tourism sector.
“These floods took place just before the most profitable week for Walloon tourism, just before the week of July 21 [Belgium’s National Day]. It is a very important week in terms of attendance and sales revenues,” said Valérie De Bue, the tourism minister for the Wallonia regional government.
The Walloon town of Durbuy, nestled in the Ardennes and calling itself the “smallest town on earth,” is popular with local tourists. It was hammered by the floods — many of its hotels and restaurants were submerged. The sector is keen to reopen: “In three to four days, everything was cleaned, 80 percent of the businesses have reopened and are operating,” said Philippe Bontemps, the mayor of Durbuy. “There are still 20 percent of businesses that have been more impacted — they will reopen in a few days and the last ones will reopen in early September.”
Local is beautiful
While traditional tourism is in trouble, the sector sees salvation in going green — relying more on people making shorter trips but staying longer rather than carbon-spewing visitors from across the ocean; in Bruges, people coming in from cruise ships would only snap a couple of photos and buy a few items before heading back.
In Durbuy, the season between last May and October was “exceptional,” said Bontemps, as local tourism exploded between the two waves of the pandemic.
To recover, the sector will have to focus on quality rather than quantity of tourists. De Bue said it’s one of Wallonia’s priorities for the future: “We must foster this type of tourism … which was revealed by the health crisis, i.e. a tourism of proximity, a tourism of respect for nature, where we favor short supply circuits.”
In Flanders too, said De Wilde, the recovery will have to be “sustainable.”
“We think about which offer we want to develop that will also benefit the local population and respect the soul of our destination,” he said. “Other destinations don’t see that, and just want to attract as many tourists as possible. That will be a real drama.”
The strategy of boosting local tourism, including from neighboring countries, will also be prioritized in Bruges. “Our emphasis will remain on quality tourism,” said De fauw. There is an economic side to this, to compensate the loss of income from overseas visitors, Bruges wants to convince future visitors to spend a few days in the city.”
On the other side of the country, Durbuy’s mayor remains hopeful. The Christmas market is the highlight of the season: “If in September everything can be reopened,” he said, “if the weather is fine and if we can do a Christmas market with guaranteed sanitary conditions, the season can still be saved.”
Despite those plans, Bruges’ mayor admits there’s still a lot of insecurity. “Of course we hope all the best for 2022,” he said, “but we said the same thing last year.”
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