Wave of U.S. Sightseers Looks Past Sanctions

VIENNA — While foreign governments try to isolate Austria for giving the far-right Freedom Party a share of national power, foreign tourists are coming here in ever larger numbers.

U.S. tourists account for the biggest increase in foreign visitors to Austria this year--and have helped convince the country’s government that it is winning the public relations war against diplomatic sanctions.

After half a year of sanctions, at least six European governments are looking for a way to lift them without appearing to capitulate. The European Court of Human Rights sent a team of three prominent politicians to Austria this week on a fact-finding mission, and Austria’s government hopes that it is a sign that the freeze on bilateral diplomatic relations could soon end.

The U.S. joined Austria’s 14 European Union partners in imposing the sanctions against Vienna on Feb. 4 after Joerg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party was made a junior partner in a coalition government.

Haider’s many critics consider him a racist Nazi sympathizer. Haider, who recently admitted visiting Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi in Tripoli, insists that he is a victim of political attacks orchestrated by the left.

The number of visitors from the U.S. staying at least overnight jumped 13.9% from the same period in 1999. The Netherlands was No. 2, with an increase of 11.5%. Britain was third, with a 10% increase.

Overall, the number of foreign visitors to Austria rose 2.2% in the first half of the year. The payoff is crucial to a country whose economy is dependent on tourism.

The main reason for the sharp increase in U.S. tourists is the much steeper decline in the value of the euro, the European currency, against the U.S. dollar, said Michael Hoferer, who heads the Austrian National Tourist Office.

The European currency is worth about 20% less against the dollar since the euro was introduced Jan. 1, 1999. Good vacation bargains have more than made up for the bad publicity that bruised Austria’s image after the Freedom Party joined the government, Hoferer said.

When news reports quoted Haider praising Nazi storm troopers, Austria’s tourism marketers tried to evoke more refined images from Austria’s past, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It seems that more people care about the musical genius than they do Haider.

“We did business as usual because the feedback we got from people is: ‘We don’t want to be bothered with these [political] issues,’ ” Hoferer said.

“I would say the political discussion is a phenomenon of the media. They pushed it,” Hoferer added. “But for people, of course they are interested in politics and what’s going on in the world. They read it. They discussed it. But it didn’t have any influence on the decision about where to spend their holidays.”

Aaron Brigman, 71, of South Carolina was one of several thousand tourists doing some people-watching in Vienna’s historic Stephansplatz on Friday afternoon. Brigman and his wife, Jean, 62, had come to Austria on a package tour, but their main destination was just across the border in Oberammergau, Germany, where they watched 1,855 actors perform a six-hour Passion play that is presented every 10 years.

The Brigmans didn’t want to miss this year’s production, so they booked a 15-day tour through a Florida company, which gave them eight days in Austria.

The retired couple said they had never heard of Haider, or his Freedom Party, and wouldn’t have let the controversy over the far right’s role in Austria’s government affect their travel plans even if they had.

“If we can stand Bill Clinton, we can stand anything,” Brigman said, and his wife laughed.

The European court’s fact-finding mission, headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, is studying Austria’s commitment to “common European values” and “the evolution of the political nature” of the Freedom Party.

Austria’s conservative chancellor, Wolfgang Schuessel, is cooperating with the mission but has publicly condemned it, complaining that it doesn’t have a clear mandate, a deadline for its report or a timetable for lifting sanctions.