Sharjah24 - AFP: Mountain bikers hurried on a summer day to catch the last gondola up the mountain at one of Austria's top Alpine resorts, loading their bikes onto racks usually reserved for skis.
Leogang-Saalbach is one of many Alpine resorts betting on warm weather activities, as rising temperatures and dwindling snow have pushed Austria to invest in alternatives to winter sports.
Bikers from all over Europe are flocking to the Salzburg region in western Austria to race down the steep slopes.
"It's just fantastic. Such kind of mountains and slopes, we just don't have them" in Estonia, 51-year-old mountain biker Jonas Ritson said of his home nation before hitting a downhill trail.
Since the pandemic, the economic significance of summer seasons has "slightly outweighed" winter seasons in the country, said Oliver Fritz, senior economist at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO).
Traditionally summer and winter have both been responsible for about half of the tourist industry's annual revenue.
But following the pandemic, the percentage has tipped toward summer, with the warm season in 2023 bringing in over half of the 29.5 billion euros ($31.9 billion) the industry generated, Fritz added.
Bikers have also become the second largest group of summer tourists in Austria after hikers, according to a survey, rising from 22 percent before the pandemic to 27 percent in 2023.
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