Coronavirus DK: German summer exchange program

Many Danes are following the Health Authority’s travel guidelines (DK) and avoiding summer trips to southern Europe. The Ausfahrt travel agency, which sells drive-yourself vacations in Germany, has seen a large demand since June 15, when the government opened the borders to three countries. Of them, Germany is the most convenient for road trips. People are choosing out-of-the-way destinations over large cities in order to minimize the risk of infection from mixing with crowds and standing in lines. 

And that is sensible, according to healthcare researchers. “Traveling by plane and passing through airports poses high risks,” says experimental virologist Allan Randrup Thomsen. “It’s better to travel in your own car, where you have your own little cabin.”

Financially safer too

It also has financial advantages, says Vagn Jelsøe of the Danish Consumer Council. “The safest is a car trip with hotel reservations that you pay for after each night.” That is because if you buy a plane ticket or make a hotel reservation in advance, you may have to cancel them if the pandemic becomes worse in the country and travel there is prohibited again. If the airline doesn’t cancel the flight, you won’t get a refund. Another solution is a package trip from an agency that offers cancellation insurance, adds Jelsøe, but you must make sure that the terms and conditions are clear.

After the border to Germany opened, the government announced that travel would be allowed to additional European countries beginning on June 27, but some people have chosen not to travel abroad at all this year. Reservations at Danish summer houses have risen. “The situation is unstable,” says Randrup Thomsen, “and you cannot plan a trip many months in advance.

The feeling is mutual

Germans are also showing great interest (DK) in visiting Denmark this summer. There were long lines of cars at the border on the day it opened because travelers must show documentation for their reservations. Retail businesses in southern Jutland also report a large turnout. “There are actually more people than there were at the same time last year,” says Thomas Hansen, the manager of a supermarket in Søndervig. “That is probably because we are not traveling out in the world. Our German guests have just waited until they could come to Denmark.”

“Our reservations are five times higher than normal,” says Ivan Kern Andersen, owner of Dråby Strand Camping. Like the summer houses on the west coast of Jutland, the camp grounds have had an above-average number of Danish visitors in the spring, but they could not make up for loss of business from Germans. The number of tourists is expected to increase further when schools go on vacation. “They say they have missed us,” says Thomas Hansen.

Subsidy for biking and hiking

The government is also trying other measures to increase travel in Denmark. In the month of July, it is proposing to make ferry trips between Danish islands free of charge (DK) for people traveling by bicycle and on foot. “This crisis has been hard. Not least for the peripheral regions in Denmark,” says Simon Kollerup, Minister of Business Affairs, who wants to “support the economy, which is more vulnerable on the small islands.” 

The ferry companies and regions with many ferry routes such as southern Funen welcome the plan, but the opposition parliamentary parties do not consider it a serious remedy that will restore jobs in the tourism industry. “A Band-Aid on an open fracture,” said Troels Lund Poulsen, the financial spokesperson for the Liberal Party.