Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

It’s back to reality for many children (and parents) in Bern who went back to school today. It’s a tough transition, especially when the warm temperatures feel more like holidays on the beach. They’ll survive though. After all, they can look forward to the next holiday in six weeks.

More holiday travel news in today’s briefing, but first the news.

Locarno at night. Keystone / Jean-Christophe Bott

In the News: Locarno lights up, suspended flights to Israel and Lebanon, and flat wage growth.

• Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) extended its suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv in Israel and Beirut in Lebanon until August 21. The airspace over Iran, Iraq and Israel will also not be used until that date, SWISS said today.
• Real wage growth looks set to be flat for most sectors as companies continue to align their wage projections with those for inflation. The Zurich-based Centre for Economic Research (KOF) reiterated its forecast of 1% inflation over the next year, which would leave employees with a 0.6% pay rise.
• Monika Ribar, chair of the board of the Swiss Federal Railways, defended the company’s decision not to operate its own trains abroad. Cooperation with neighbouring countries is the better option than operating a connection abroad itself, said Ribar in an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) today.
• Organisers of the Locarno Film Festival have plenty to cheer about. Halfway through the festival, there are a quarter more visitors to the Piazza Grande than last year. One key highlight: Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón received the lifetime achievement award yesterday.

More tourists are flocking to Zermatt. Keystone / Christian Beutler

Overtourism is a problem in some parts of Switzerland, but it isn’t necessarily the tourists’ fault. Take the case study of Zermatt.

Last winter, I was in a cable car to the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise and met two people from Brazil who were “passing by” Zermatt on their way to Zurich.

Passing through Zermatt used to be hard because there weren’t many ways to reach the mountain resort without skis. This has changed now that Zermatt has opened the summit of the Klein Matterhorn so that people can reach it from both sides – Italy and Switzerland – wrote the NZZ today. Previously only skiers could travel between the two countries.

“Everything for the tourists,” wrote the NZZ in an in-depth feature on how Zermatt is upgrading technology and offerings to attract tourists from abroadExternal link. “This means that Zermatt is targeting guests from far abroad, often from Asia, who want to float past the world-famous Matterhorn on their European tour.”

The strategy appears to be working, at least from a financial perspective. The area counted a record high of almost 2.7 million overnight stays in 2023. More than half of the guests came from abroad, and almost half of the overnight stays took place in the summer.

What’s lurking under Swiss lakes? Keystone-SDA

The Olympics are over, but the Swiss government is kicking off its own competition at home. The latest event: recovering munitions from lakes.

Thousands of tonnes of old ammunition have lain dormant in Swiss lakes for decades. From 1918 to 1964, the army dumped over 12,000 tonnes of unused materiel into various Swiss lakes – notably Thun, Lucerne and Brienz.

Decades later, the Swiss government is still trying to figure out how to dig them out safely. Instead of putting more of its own brains together to come up with solutions, the government is taking the problem to the people. As my colleague, Domhnall O’Sullivan wrote, the Federal Office for Armaments (armasuisse) has launched a competition (more officially – a contest of ideas) to come up with the best idea.

The best three ideas – as decided by an expert panel – will share a prize pot of CHF50,000 ($57,780). Some of the ideas suggested from internet users thus far have left some people scratching their heads. One suggested emptying the lakes and filling them back up again. Maybe you have a better idea?