Destination · Allemagne & Autriche
Alpine national parks, ancient forests, a deeply-rooted wellness culture — the German-speaking world is reinventing sustainable travel with rare rigour. A few addresses that prove it.
There is something particular about travelling in Austria or Germany with the eyes of sustainable tourism. The labels here are serious — the Österreichisches Umweltzeichen, the Viabono, the EMAS are not won with a handful of pot plants on the terrace. To commit here means auditing consumption, sourcing meals within ten kilometres, heating buildings with wood from your own forest. This is not marketing — it is a culture. These few addresses are its finest expression.
In the morning, from the bedroom, the peaks of Hohe Tauern National Park emerge in the light. The Ganzer family has run this hotel for three generations — investing not to expand it but to deepen it. The Deferegger Heilwasser is a 600,000-year-old spring water among the most effective in the world. The Outside does not pretend.
Beside a forest lake in the wild Pinzgau region few travellers know, Forsthofgut is one of Austria's most silent and most beautiful addresses. The forest is private for guests: you can walk alone in the early morning without seeing a soul. The contemporary architecture does not seek to impose itself — it seeks to disappear into the landscape. And it succeeds.
Perched at 900 metres with a vertiginous view over the Inn valley, Grafenast cultivates a rare rigour: consistency. No televisions in the rooms — a deliberate choice. The cuisine has been 100% organic for over twenty years. You come to Grafenast not to be distracted — but to find something you had lost.
In the Obertal valley, where the Black Forest truly turns black — dense, deep, almost intimidating — Engel is a family institution that chose sustainability long before it became fashionable. EMAS-certified and Viabono-labelled, it heats its spaces with wood from the neighbouring forest. This is what the Schwarzwald has always been: a way of life rooted in a territory.
Oberstdorf is Germany's last town before the Alps. Mohren is a founding member of Biohotels Europe. You come here to walk all day and return to the table with an honest hunger. The mountain is not a backdrop: it is the programme.
The Ötztal is one of the wildest valleys in the Alps — the place where Ötzi the prehistoric hunter slept in the ice for 5,000 years. Landhotel Anna settled here with a simple logic: breed Haflinger horses on site, cultivate an organic garden, guide guests toward the glaciers. This is the Austria that existed before ski lifts.
In the southern Black Forest, where the firs grow giant and the paths are rare, Adler is the hotel you do not look for but are happy to find. Traditional Schwarzwald farmhouse cuisine. Wellness is not sold as a service here — it is offered as an obvious truth. The silence is included in the price.
Far from the Alps, in the flat, lake-studded Mecklenburg that Germans call the "land of a thousand lakes", Gut Edenhof proves that eco-tourism is not a mountain affair. In spring, migratory birds arrive in their thousands on the reeds. This is a secret Germany, gentle and almost forgotten.
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