Swiss Review 4/2018

7 Swiss Review / July 2018 / No.4 DANIEL DI FALCO It doesn’t have to be a drive-in chapel for skiers on the piste, a penguin zoo on a 2,500-metre-high peak or the longest staircase in theworld. Even far less outlandish projects pro- voke discontent. Rigi Plus, an organisation representing two dozen companies in the tourism sector, unveiled its master plan last summer. The 200-page document focused on the Rigi as a location for experience-based activities and its “sustainable positioning”. It aims to provide more ap- pealing offers for visitors to the mountain that boasts pan- oramic views and a rich history as well as better economic prospects for operators. Its proposals include a new web- site, a booking system for all destinations in the area and a uniform brand identity. But that is not all. “Travelling up to the peak, looking down and enjoying the view are no longer enough today,” explained Stefan Otz, Managing Director of the Rigi Rail- ways, the biggest company on and up the mountain. He was brought in from Interlaken where he was the Direc- tor of Tourism. His task is now to provide fresh impetus on the Rigi. Otz is talking about “exciting projects”, a tree- house hotel, a pine-cone-shaped viewing tower and an al- pine hut with a cheese dairy for visitors and a schnapps distillery. “We’re certainly not planning the kind of sterile facili- ties that lead to mass tourism,” added Otz. “We won’t im- plement any projects on the Rigi that don’t belong there.” But his assurances were not enough to prevent the storm that blew up shortly afterwards. It started in the readers’ letters columns and then spread to the wider public. With an online petition, alpine conservationists, politicians, ar- chitects, business people, scientists and prominent figures, such as Emil Steinberger, fought against the “insidious transformation” of the Rigi into a “Disneyland for over a million tourists” a year. The Rigi Railways already trans- ports three quarters of a million passengers today. The pe- tition said: “We don’t want artificial experiences which represent a sell-out of the Rigi.” “An enormous influx of outsiders” Sell-out? Can a mountain that has been used for tourism for so long really be sold out? The Rigi was in fact already a fashionable mountain destination two hundred years ago. A covered viewing point was built in 1816, a viewing tower in 1820 and finally Europe’s very first mountain railway in 1871. The “queen of themountains”, as it is known, was over- run with tourists, and this was in the supposedly more se- date period of the 19th century. The “influx of outsiders” was “truly enormous”, reported the “Echo vom Rigi” dur- ing the first season of the mountain railway, with visitors even sleeping in the corridors of the hotels which provided over a thousand beds at the time. Three years later, the rail- way transported over 100,000 visitors up themountain for the first time. Mark Twain gave an account of what could be experi- enced there besides the legendary sunrise and the no less infamous hordes of tourists eagerly anticipating it. In 1879, the Americanwriter climbed the Rigi on foot fromWeggis and soon heard “for the first time the famous alpine yodel From the exhibition at the Alpine Museum in Berne Photo: Keystone in its own native wilds”. His joy was nevertheless short- lived as “after that we found a yodeller every ten minutes” and they all wanted people to put money in their hat for performing. After the fourth, fifth or sixth time “during the remainder of the daywe paid the rest of the yodellers a franc apiece not to yodel anymore. There is somewhat too much of this yodelling in the Alps.” Thrills and spills on the mountain This raises the question as to where the line between sell- ing and selling out lies. For the critics of the latest master plan for the Rigi, the answer is where the experiences be- come “artificial”. The symptomatic word for this is Disn- eyland. This is the nightmare scenario and a byword for the synthetic, interchangeable schemes of an alpine events industry. This is not just restricted to the Rigi either. The evils of “Disneyfication” were also highlighted when Eu- rope’s highest suspension bridge was built on the Titlis and the first one between two peaks was constructed at Les Diablerets. There was a similar response when the Schilthorn railway opened the “Thrill Walk” beneath its middle station – a steel bridgewith a latticed and glass floor built into the vertical rock face beneath which lies a 200-metre abyss. “Thrills and an exhilarating mountain experience,” proclaimed the advert. While such ideas en- able tourist destinations to remain attractive and take on the competition, conservation organisations complain that the Alps are being transformed into an adventure playground. For example, MountainWilderness – a group founded by winter sport enthusiasts – is calling for “more