And the story goes on: mid-August, the summer ITALY weather continues to SWISS sputter along, where is AUSTRIA the journey heading? PORTUGAL After a brief phase in FRANCE early summer when UK travel was – or, at least, was perceived to be – unrestricted, the delta variant led to several rebooking and cancellation scenarios as infection figures at classic holiday destinations rose rapidly. Greece replaced Portugal, the flight to the Canary Islands turned into a camping trip to Schleswig-Holstein. Flanked by water, Germany’s northernmost federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has been in great demand since last year. In August 2020, overnight stays at the local campsites were already seeing a 21.1% increase over the same month of the previous year! The latest figures once again show a big plus, with a 25.2% growth for the six months from January to June 2021, compared to the same period last year. The drop in overnight stays reported by the hotel industry, which remained closed for a long time due to the pandemic, could be thereby at least compensated for by these positive figures (source: statistik-nord.de).
GERMANY
This trend is confirmed by Tobias Seemeier of Good Times Surfshop. At the holiday destination of Sankt Peter-Ording, Tobi runs his own shop as a concept store. “Tourism in Germany is booming, and this has a very positive impact on my sales figures! However, especially for my concept with a sales area, café-bar and cultural centre, the current Covid regulations do not allow for normal business, which would definitely attract many more visitors.” His current top sellers are wetsuits and cold water surf equipment in general. Moreover, textiles are now selling much better and sales of shop merchandise are also solid. Tobias is experiencing supply bottlenecks 70
especially in the hardware sector: “Neoprene stocks are virtually non-existent and the waiting time for hand-shaped boards has become much longer!” Three hours’ drive east of Sankt Peter-Ording, Surf and Fashion Fehmarn is another shop located in the middle of a holiday area. “Here in Schleswig-Holstein, we were lucky enough to be allowed to reopen completely for both the Pentecost and Ascension holidays. Since then, the sales figures have been very good and have so far come close to last year’s record figures. You do notice that some of the day visitors are missing, as many of them are no longer on a reduced work schedule, but even so, the coast is fully booked,” says shop owner Jan Ueberall, describing the situation. At his shop, the entire product range is selling well, with a strikingly large number of complete skateboards leaving the shop in the hands of female customers. Textile products are also doing very well and longboarding is on the rise again. “Overall, we’ve been able to almost make up for the losses suffered at Easter, which is normally our strongest weekend of the year in terms of sales, and we’re now hoping we’ll be allowed to stay open in the autumn.” In addition to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the supply chain continues to have a massive impact on the sales situation. “For some brands, you are not allowed to exceed last year’s order volume and the pre-order deadlines have been brought forward by a few weeks – a particularly tricky timing for us to manage during the peak holiday season. On top of that, reorders for skate hardware and water sports have been almost impossible to place already since June,” says Jan, taking a critical look at the procurement situation. Away from the coast, Cologne is dealing with the same problem. “There are bottlenecks especially concerning neoprene and surfboards, but the problem actually affects all categories,” says Stefan Held of surf
