Nothing after the war is as it was before. Many of the aristocratic regular guests at the grand hotels have lost a significant portion of their wealth and largely stay away. The Alpine tourist resorts have to reinvent themselves: following the spirit of the times, they focus on sport. Merano, as it is now officially known, opens a 9-hole golf course in 1922 and hosts international tennis tournaments, while St. Moritz develops into an international winter sports resort, and Lech into a centre for skiing.
Many of the international migration routes of the Belle Époque come to an end. Year-round tourism in St. Moritz now means that people can work permanently in the same place. In Lech, the new border between Austria and Italy prevents any influx of workers from the south. The regular exchanges between Merano and the Bohemian spa resorts – now located in completely different countries – cease. In Merano, hotel owners from Germany and Austria see their assets expropriated. The new Fascist regime restricts the proportion of foreign workers, encouraging an influx of Italian waiters into the new province of Bolzano, at the same time excluding women from service functions.
Yet new forms of work-related migration emerge: to this day, tourism as an economic sector still features one of the highest proportions of workers from outside the region.
Advertising posters for St. Moritz (1928), Lech (1934) and Meran (1924)
Rätisches Museum, Chur
Lechmuseum, Lech
Touriseum – Südtiroler Landesmuseum für Tourismus/Museo provinciale del turismo, Meran/o
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