Tour operators and conference centres criticise the state government for being late in holiday planning. The fact that the so-called small holidays, i.e. the autumn, Christmas and Easter holidays, have not yet been determined from the 2024/25 school year onwards, makes it difficult to plan trips and seminars.

Rainer Schulze

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The dates of the summer holidays are already known until 2030; they are coordinated by the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs on a transnational basis. However, all other holidays are scheduled by the individual federal states. Hesse is the only state lagging behind here. Because the holiday dates from the autumn holidays 2024 onwards have not yet been set, tour operators cannot plan their annual programmes, conference centres cannot rent out their rooms and schools cannot prepare school trips.

The company Musica Viva, which offers music courses in holiday regions, draws attention to the problem. "All companies that want to incorporate the school holidays into their planning are affected," says company founder Fabian Payr. For example, conference venues could not yet make appointments because the holidays have not yet been determined. "Even if we want to hire lecturers, we need to know when the autumn holidays are," says Payr.

Other countries have long since completed planning

Hesse is the only federal state that is lagging behind with the planning: "All other states have long since published the dates," explains Ariane Egner-Payr. Her company Viva Musica has already completed planning for the coming year, but is not getting any confirmation of bookings from certain hotels and also from the Hessian State Music Academy because they are still waiting for the 2024 autumn holidays to be scheduled. "All those who want to plan for the long term are in limbo. This is a big problem for travel companies that have to plan through the whole of 2024," says Egner-Payr.

The Landesmusikakademie in Schlitz confirms that its rooms can only be booked in autumn 2024 when the holiday dates have been set. During the autumn holidays, the academy in Hallenburg Castle in Schlitz always accommodates the state youth ensembles with their students. "We can't yet determine our program in the fall because we have to keep these dates free," says Managing Director Mareike Wütscher. The first groups have already switched to other premises because they need planning security. "There is a risk that customers will stay away," says Wütscher.

School trips cannot be booked

The Youth Hostel Association is also aware of the problem. As the spokesperson explains, many schools plan their school trips well in advance and reserve rooms. Many schools like to schedule class trips directly before the autumn holidays, because then there are no exams. "However, because the 2024 autumn holidays have not yet been determined, no school trips can be booked yet," says the spokesman. However, this will only become a real problem after the summer holidays, when the school trips are being prepared for next year.

As the spokesman for the Ministry of Education explains, holiday planning is coordinated with various institutions and associations. Among other things, the state parents' council must be involved. Because this "complex participation process" has not yet been completed, the date has not yet been set. Some tour operators and calendar publishers have already complained to the ministry about this.

Hesse wants to set the dates of the small holidays by the 2029/2030 school year. According to the Ministry of Culture, the procedure for determining the Easter, autumn and Christmas holidays could only be started after the cross-border determination of the summer holidays. These holiday dates are expected to be published "in early summer 2023", according to the website of the Ministry of Culture. The spokesman hopes that the dates will be fixed in a few weeks, probably at the end of May – but no later than the summer holidays. Then the date will be published in the Hessian State Gazette.

In terms of the length of the holidays, Hesse wants to return to the old regulation. The autumn and Easter holidays should therefore last two weeks each. In the 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 school years, the autumn holidays were only set for one week because the summer holidays were scheduled late. In this way, it should be avoided that there are two weeks of vacation in October when school has just started again in September. The Easter holidays have been extended to three weeks for these school years.