LIFESTYLE

The road less travelled

Belgium’s tourist agencies have responded to the coronavirus crisis with creativity and resilience

✶By Lisa Bradshaw

© Belga/Eric Lalmand

It’s no secret that 2020 was a disastrous year for the tourism industry, and no less so in Belgium than in the rest of the world. The country’s three regions are gearing up for a slightly better, albeit still uncertain, summer this year, with each doing its best to attract local holidaymakers as international travel remains stalled.

The situation for tourism in the capital last year was “catastrophic”, says Jeroen Roppe of Visit Brussels. Some 80% of the city’s tourists come from abroad, compared to 50 to 60% in the other regions. As international tourism slowed to a stop, Visit Brussels launched the Brussels Health Safety Label to get Belgians to visit their capital city and give a boost to the local tourism sector. The label was given to hotels, restaurants and attractions that conformed to coronavirus measures. It was one of the first concrete measures that the agency took following the lockdown, says Roppe. “It continues to be a success today because it reassures people. They need signs that they can visit the city in safe conditions.”

But Brussels fell victim to an almost immediate phenomenon: when measures were relaxed, Belgians took to the forests, countryside and coast, not to the cities. They wanted, in fact, to escape the cities, which they had come to see as claustrophobic. Belgians going on holiday prefer large, open spaces, Roppe admits, “so it was difficult to attract Belgian tourists.” Visit Brussels also had to completely change its mar-

© WBT/Olivier Legardien

Cycling Through Water in Limburg (above); walking in the Hautes Fagnes (opposite); the GR long-distance footpath (below)

© Christophe Vandercam

keting perspective, which focuses most of its budget on international tourists.

Brussels’ loss was Wallonia’s gain, as it saw 90% of its visitors last year come from inside Belgium. “They were from all the regions, including people who live in Wallonia,” says Pierre Coenegrachts, deputy CEO of Visit Wallonia. “About 40% of them had never been to the area they were visiting before. A lot of people go on holiday abroad, and they don’t even know their own country.”

And Wallonia had the goods to deliver to people looking for outdoor activities and fresh air. “They discovered hiking and biking along the lakes and the rivers,” says Coenegrachts. “They went to the abbeys in Orval and Chimay, and they discovered the German-speaking part of the country. So this was interesting because it was an opportunity for the sector to get the attention of this captive audience.”

The Visit Wallonia brand was launched during this period, so that all touristic activities could advertise themselves under the same name. The region also launched a campaign, including financial incentives, to help guesthouses, tourist attractions and the hospitality industry increase their digital presence.

“We realised that 40% of the operators in the tourism sector in Wallonia didn’t even have a proper website,” says Coenegrachts. Being able to reserve online has become the Covid norm for practically anything visi-

“Crisis has brought our industry together and that is something we need to keep alive”

© visit.brussels /Eric Danhier © visit.brussels /Jean-Paul Rémy

tors want to do. “We suggested that they develop their own websites and master plans for the coming months. That worked quite well; we have more than 700 partners who started allowing booking online.” This is going to be invaluable this summer as well, he says. “We think it’s going to be necessary to book tickets online for everything, from a museum to canoeing down the river.”

Peter De Wilde of Visit Flanders, meanwhile, saw the crisis coming well ahead of time. With local offices around the world, including in China, they were getting reports about what the near future could hold. In his years at the

“Belgians couldn’t get out soon enough, and the neighbours didn’t want in!”

head of the regional tourism bureau, De Wilde has weathered both the financial crisis and the terrorist attacks of 2016. Still, he says, “in the weeks before the lockdown, we began to understand that this could be the biggest crisis we had ever seen.”

They weren’t wrong. Immediate contingency plans called for a shift in budget from Asia to Europe, which in February then shifted again to general promotion of the region rather than specific tourist options for 2020. As the summer approached, they hoped that local tourism would make up for

The deserted centre of Brussels during lockdown in March 2020

© Dieter Telemans

the lack of international tourists. But it didn’t.“Belgians, along with the Swiss, are the most travel-minded people in the world,” says De Wilde.

“When the government opened up the borders in the summer, people began booking straight away. Then we were counting on the Dutch and the French and the Germans to come and save us. But they did spend their holidays domestically. So it was a double whammy – Belgians couldn’t get out soon enough, and the neighbours didn’t want in!” Flanders lost about €17 billion in tourist revenue in 2020. 

Jeroen Roppe, Visit Brussels Roppe is keen to recommend the Roger Raveel retrospective at Bozar fine arts centre. There are 150 works spanning 70 years in the life of one of the greatest Belgian artists of the 20th century. He also points visitors to the architectural gem Villa Empain in Ixelles and its current exhibition Icons, a look at how representations of the divine have inspired both believers and artists.

bozar.be villaempain.com

Pierre Coenegrachts, Visit Wallonia Coenegrachts points out that his region is the place to enjoy the great outdoors. He recommends Lacs de l’Eau d’Heure, Belgium’s largest system of lakes. It boasts 65 kilometres of shoreline – the same as the Belgian coast. Visitors can bike, hike, canoe, golf and swim. He’d also like more expats to explore the area around Spa. Known as Belgium’s centre of car racing, it’s also the heart of the

Ardennes, with beautiful forests and rivers, as well as those eponymous mineral baths.

lacsdeleaudheure.be spatourisme.be

Peter De Wilde, Visit Flanders De Wilde has plenty of culture and heritage to recommend. In Ghent, a new visitor centre in Sint-Baafs cathedral has been built around Belgium’s greatest artistic masterpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, complete with an augmented reality experience. De Wilde also points visitors to three contemporary art trails taking place this summer: Bruges Triennial, Beaufort 21 at the coast and Paradise in Kortrijk. Finally, he insists that anyone who can ride a bike should head to Limburg, specifically to the Cycling Through Water and Cycling Through the Trees attractions.

sintbaafskathedraal.be triennalebrugge.be beaufort21.be paradisekortrijk.be visitlimburg.be

© Belga/Bruno Fahy

“People need signs that they can visit the city in safe conditions”

Cancelled flights at Brussels Airport (above) and Covid-secure tour guides in the city centre (below)

© visit.brussels /Eric Danhier

The region did notice, however, that its green areas and nature reserves got a lot more visitors than usual. Holiday homes in Limburg and at the coast, De Wilde notes, “were booked solid”. This year could see a similar trend, but Flanders will increase its international campaigns in the middle of the summer, once most Belgians are vaccinated. It will be focused on the region’s “art cities”, which include Ghent, Antwerp and Mechelen. “We are going to focus on the identity of each city and on how each one is the perfect size for exploring.”

Brussels, meanwhile, is doing the opposite. If Belgians want green space, it will remind them how much it has. “Brussels is one of the greenest capitals in the world,” says Roppe. “More than half of the region is green. Most Belgians don’t realise that.” Its summer campaign also focuses on Brussels as a bike-friendly city. “When you look at how much the infrastructure has improved over the last couple of years, it’s quite impressive.”

All three bureaus respond the same way when asked what they learned from the experience: that people are resilient. “As a government agency, it doesn’t work to go and tell people what to do,” says De Wilde. “You have to listen to what they need. There is a fundamental difference there. There is such great creativity in the human response to these situations that you just need to tap into. Crisis can bring people together. What I have seen is that it has brought our industry together. And that is something we need to keep alive.”