German wanderlust seemingly unaffected by danger, disaster

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BERLIN (Reuters) -- Plane crashes, hostage dramas, dicey encounters with guerrillas -- it appears nothing can hold Germans back from indulging a passion for travel which they have unrivaled leisure time and cash to indulge.

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Even the deaths of 96 nationals on board Air France's doomed Concorde airliner on Tuesday is not expected to derail a summer 2000 holiday season set to prove once again that Germans lead the world in travel.

"We've never experienced any negative impact from such incidents," said Melanie Schacher of the Frankfurt-based Federation of German Travel Agents and Tour Operators, confident this year's holiday sales would not be damaged.

Ulrich Reinhardt, analyst at the Hamburg-based BAT Leisure Research Institute, said there was no sign that Europe's richest nation was ready to dump its long-held belief that long, lavish holidays were "one of their major priorities."

Germans spent some $43 billion abroad last year, an outflow so huge it has prompted the national central bank to warn darkly of damage to the country's balance of payments.

This sheer wanderlust -- which only the British and Japanese come near to matching -- has meant German involvement in any major tourist drama around the world is a virtual certainty.

A plane crash off the Dominican Republic in 1996 which killed 189, mostly Germans, was the worst international disaster to hit the country recently, but less serious incidents abound.

Germans were among 20 skiers killed in 1998 when a U.S. pilot on a training mission sheared the lift cables of a gondola in an Italian mountain range, sending its occupants to their deaths. Last year, six Germans died in a bus crash in Turkey, while seven were killed in a road accident in South Africa.

In far-flung locations, Germans have proven a target for local guerrillas, as shown by the continuing hostage saga of the Wallert family adbucted by Philippine rebels three months ago. Only Wednesday, Indian authorities said a German tourist kidnapped by Muslim militants in Kashmir was feared dead.

But with economic and labor conditions here so conducive to international travel, analysts say Germans are more than ready to brush off such incidents.

"We have much more holiday allowance here, around 26 days compared to the one to two weeks in the United States and Japan," said BAT's Reinhardt. "Pensions are very good, meaning older people have both the time and money to go abroad."

Since the 1960s, when Germany was enjoying the fruits of its post-World War II "economic miracle," sociologists have noted a gradual attrition of the work ethic by a "leisure ethic."

Chancellors including Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl -- who attacked what he called a "Leisure Park Germany" attitude -- have even felt moved to urge the nation to work harder.

Aside from lying on a beach in Spain or Italy, the two top destinations for Germans, the country has in recent years enthusiastically taken on board the Western trend for adventure holidays and vacations in ever more exotic locations.

Reinhardt said increasingly stiff competition from homegrown attractions could gradually start to weaken the lure of travel beyond Germany's border, in a way that fear of danger has not.

"There are signs that all-weather holiday villages are getting more and more popular here, while towns and cities are throwing on more events to bring people in during the summer," he noted.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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