Sopot struggles with choosier tourists
Scandinavian countries helped underwrite the cleanup and prevention measures which, finally, are coming to fruition in terms of pollution-free swimming on a growing number of beaches.
Sopot has 4.5 kilometers of beach, and half of the township's surface is green. There are miles of walking and biking trails along the Baltic that go from sandy beaches into the forests by the Baltic and out again. These tie into the Baltic trails from Gdansk to Gdynia. One trail leads to picnic grounds in the woods that has a pit for roasting a pig (you bring your own).
Sopot dates back 700 years, and for the past century it was an international tourist playground for the rich and famous as part of Germany. After World War II, when the borders were changed, Poland regained the Baltic cities.
But under Soviet domination, nearly all private property was nationalized, including the elaborate three-story carved stone-and-wooden houses, which have been owned by the city in recent decades with scant maintenance and with many families occupying what had been mansions of the elite.
The city recently began selling off some of the grand houses - those where there wasn't a political problem with needing to relocate a half-dozen families first.
Sopot, like other cities on the Baltic, is scrambling to cope with the huge shift from the era when everything was centrally controlled to today's chaotic market.
For starters, in the past, everything was orchestrated from somewhere else on rentals of most vacation resorts. Most were attached to factories or worksites and open only to those workers. There was a "central registry" for hotels and pensions in the town. When the system changed in 1990, many hotels were privatized but getting good information about them was a problem.
There is still no central rental information office for the area's hotels and resorts; a computerized reservation network is still on the drawing board.
Some factories and workplaces built motel-like facilities on the Baltic or in the surrounding woods. But the operative assumption was that nearly all tourists would be "affiliated" with their workplace vacation place or, in some cases, in all family groups on campgrounds.
The upshot was a starvation of what would have been a normal evolution of a tourist infrastructure over the past half century. Few new hotels have been built; the massive Grand Hotel in Sopot is far from grand, except its location off the handsome Sopot boardwalk.
The Grand is caught in an economic limbo: too expensive for the bulk of Polish tourists - if they have that kind of money, they're going to Greece or Italy this year - yet too shabby for elite internationals. It has a two-year renovation underway to try and put some reality behind the name.
Inexplicably, however, its small outdoor bar is nestled into a small park on the Sopot side of the hotel, facing the street and the pedestrian walkway - but away from the magnificent sunset reflected in the Baltic. That view is had only by diners in the cramped second-floor restaurant - or from the rooms with small, curved balconies.
Because of the housing shortage, tourists who appreciate the old-world charm of Sopot are staying in motels and hotels up the coast in Gdynia or even Gdansk.
Sopot has three campgrounds with 900 campsites, seven hotels (or 12 if small pensions are included in the count) costing about z*. 50 ($21.27) per person, and containing about 2,000, rooms and there are about 10,000 rooms total if bed & breakfasts are included. But many of these aren't good enough for today's better-heeled tourist, says the manager of the Orbis office.
"Four years ago, there were many who stayed in these private rooms, but now tourists expect to have bathrooms (in their rooms) and Sopot is very, very old so we don't have those. And no new ones are being built in town. The new ones are being built outside, near the forest," she said.
The city, however, has put much work into creating a substantial tourist infrastructure, and this appears to be paying off. It has succeeded in attracting many entrepreneurs to open shops and cafes. Activities include an opera-in-the-woods, windsurfing clubs and annual competitions, horseback riding, racetracks that reopened two years ago, three indoor and 24 outdoor tennis courts, a large running track, a rugby field and two football fields.
Sopot does not have a protected harbor, but one pending project is for a $10 million yacht port between Sopot and Gdansk. The city would also like to find investors who could put up a sports hotel - that was one of their come-on proposals at the economic fair recently in Poznan - and they know they need more medium-sized, modestly-priced hotels in general.
A Hong Kong company recently opened a restaurant and hotel near the boardwalk on the Baltic. And talks are under way with Swedes and Americans for more.
Sopot has 4.5 kilometers of beach, and half of the township's surface is green. There are miles of walking and biking trails along the Baltic that go from sandy beaches into the forests by the Baltic and out again. These tie into the Baltic trails from Gdansk to Gdynia. One trail leads to picnic grounds in the woods that has a pit for roasting a pig (you bring your own).
Sopot dates back 700 years, and for the past century it was an international tourist playground for the rich and famous as part of Germany. After World War II, when the borders were changed, Poland regained the Baltic cities.
But under Soviet domination, nearly all private property was nationalized, including the elaborate three-story carved stone-and-wooden houses, which have been owned by the city in recent decades with scant maintenance and with many families occupying what had been mansions of the elite.
The city recently began selling off some of the grand houses - those where there wasn't a political problem with needing to relocate a half-dozen families first.
Sopot, like other cities on the Baltic, is scrambling to cope with the huge shift from the era when everything was centrally controlled to today's chaotic market.
For starters, in the past, everything was orchestrated from somewhere else on rentals of most vacation resorts. Most were attached to factories or worksites and open only to those workers. There was a "central registry" for hotels and pensions in the town. When the system changed in 1990, many hotels were privatized but getting good information about them was a problem.
There is still no central rental information office for the area's hotels and resorts; a computerized reservation network is still on the drawing board.
Some factories and workplaces built motel-like facilities on the Baltic or in the surrounding woods. But the operative assumption was that nearly all tourists would be "affiliated" with their workplace vacation place or, in some cases, in all family groups on campgrounds.
The upshot was a starvation of what would have been a normal evolution of a tourist infrastructure over the past half century. Few new hotels have been built; the massive Grand Hotel in Sopot is far from grand, except its location off the handsome Sopot boardwalk.
The Grand is caught in an economic limbo: too expensive for the bulk of Polish tourists - if they have that kind of money, they're going to Greece or Italy this year - yet too shabby for elite internationals. It has a two-year renovation underway to try and put some reality behind the name.
Inexplicably, however, its small outdoor bar is nestled into a small park on the Sopot side of the hotel, facing the street and the pedestrian walkway - but away from the magnificent sunset reflected in the Baltic. That view is had only by diners in the cramped second-floor restaurant - or from the rooms with small, curved balconies.
Because of the housing shortage, tourists who appreciate the old-world charm of Sopot are staying in motels and hotels up the coast in Gdynia or even Gdansk.
Sopot has three campgrounds with 900 campsites, seven hotels (or 12 if small pensions are included in the count) costing about z*. 50 ($21.27) per person, and containing about 2,000, rooms and there are about 10,000 rooms total if bed & breakfasts are included. But many of these aren't good enough for today's better-heeled tourist, says the manager of the Orbis office.
"Four years ago, there were many who stayed in these private rooms, but now tourists expect to have bathrooms (in their rooms) and Sopot is very, very old so we don't have those. And no new ones are being built in town. The new ones are being built outside, near the forest," she said.
The city, however, has put much work into creating a substantial tourist infrastructure, and this appears to be paying off. It has succeeded in attracting many entrepreneurs to open shops and cafes. Activities include an opera-in-the-woods, windsurfing clubs and annual competitions, horseback riding, racetracks that reopened two years ago, three indoor and 24 outdoor tennis courts, a large running track, a rugby field and two football fields.
Sopot does not have a protected harbor, but one pending project is for a $10 million yacht port between Sopot and Gdansk. The city would also like to find investors who could put up a sports hotel - that was one of their come-on proposals at the economic fair recently in Poznan - and they know they need more medium-sized, modestly-priced hotels in general.
A Hong Kong company recently opened a restaurant and hotel near the boardwalk on the Baltic. And talks are under way with Swedes and Americans for more.
