World News
Oktoberfest: Table reservations going for thousands of euros─── 05:42 Mon, 30 Mar 2015
Munich – Reservations for places at tables in the beer tents at Munich’s world-famous Oktoberfest this autumn are already changing hands online for thousands of euros, according to recent newspaper reports.
The October beer festival, which contrary to its name actually starts on September 19, draws 6 million visitors to the Bavarian capital each year from the four corners of the Earth and some are prepared to dig deep into their pockets for a table reservation.
potential guests to book lunch spaces.
Meanwhile, beer landlords have not yet received permits from the city authorities as they are issued in April, so they can only take provisional bookings.
Toni Roiderer, spokesman for the landlords and landladies, told dpa recently that they were behaving correctly and only taking conditional pre-bookings for vouchers worth 25 to 85 euros.
However, unofficial online re-sale portals are taking table reservations for 500 euros per person and up to 10,000 euros for two whole tables.
“We call on people not to pay these astronomical prices,” said Thomas Reiner, spokesman for beer festival organizer Josef Schmid.
Roiderer also warned people away from the online reservation sites, saying, “We say to people: don’t touch as you won’t get anything from it.”
Ultimately people arrive at the festival from all parts of the world and the place is not reserved after all, Roiderer said.
The situation has become worse wince 2013 when the then festival chief and current Mayor of Munich Dieter Reiter changed the rules to restrict the number of seats that could be pre-booked.
The intention was to allow more local Munich residents to turn up spontaneously and find seats in the beer tents.
ANA
