TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG "Leading article" edition from Saturday, October 14, 2023, by Max Strozzi: "Bathrooms are left high and dry"

2023-10-13 21:07:05

Innsbruck (OTS) – Tyrol’s swimming pool landscape is financially parched and warns of further swimming pool deaths. It’s about important infrastructure for people, but also about our own mistakes. In any case, you need to hurry, and this also applies to the bathroom study.

It wasn’t the first cry for help from the Tyrolean swimming pools and the affected location mayors, but it was one of the loudest. Now the next indoor pool, Axams, is temporarily available for swimming: no swimming in winter, at least the sauna remains open. The Olympic region south of Innsbruck is not yet as advanced as the Wörgl water worlds, in Ehrwald or in the Neustift leisure center, which have permanently closed their doors, especially since the pools there are scheduled to reopen next summer. But it is the next facility that stumbles. It continues the trend that has been apparent for several years.
It is not new that many pools have dried up financially. Even before the energy crisis, they were considered subsidy companies that were operated with a lot of tax money. The population can afford such an infrastructure, even if it runs at a loss. It’s about children’s swimming courses, most of which take place indoors, and about a popular sport that is guaranteed to be fatal if you don’t master it. But it’s also about offering exercise for adults and seniors to keep themselves fit for as long as possible. It’s about physiotherapy, meaningful leisure activities and fulfilling family experiences, social contacts, pure fun, and a well-rounded tourist offer in the region.
The skyrocketing energy prices have now significantly worsened the financial problems of swimming pools – this applies to Axams, Telfs and Leutasch as well as to many other of the around 20 indoor swimming pools in Tyrol. The renewed call for financial aid from the state should not distract from our own mistakes. The operation and ongoing maintenance of swimming pools consume a lot of money, that is clear to everyone right from the start. It is therefore foreseeable that two such facilities within a few kilometers will be difficult to operate in the long term – as was the case in Seefeld and Leutasch or as was the case in the Stubaital – even without an energy crisis. It is no surprise that sooner or later there will be a need for renovation or new investments.
Given these circumstances, the delay in the pool needs study is difficult to understand. Announced as being practically launched in the spring, it was only commissioned last week. In the end, it should set the direction for Tyrol’s spa landscape, for example a financial solidarity between the surrounding communities. Until then – to paraphrase an expression – there will still be a lot of water flowing through the swimming pools. Or not anymore.