Viennese Ball Season: Every Third Viennese Plans to Attend a Ball
The Viennese ball season is just around the corner and the Viennese people can hardly wait. According to a survey, a large part of the Viennese want to visit one of the many balls. After two years of uncertainty due to the Covid-19 pandemic, organisers can look forward to a good season this year.
The Vienna Opera Ball is the most important event of the Viennese ball season. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / Gryffindor [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
Vienna is famous for its many balls and dance events. But apart from the well-known events such as the Vienna Opera Ball or the Philharmonic Ball, there are many other wonderful balls that attract both Viennese and international guests to Austria's capital.
This year, the Viennese ball season is under particularly good omens. After many balls had to be cancelled in recent years due to the Covid-19 situation, the Viennese are once again eager for an evening of dancing and fun.
"The Viennese ball season will celebrate a brilliant comeback this year," Markus Grießler, Chairman of the Tourism and Leisure Industry Division in the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, is convinced.
His organisation commissioned a survey, which, as in previous years, asked the Viennese about their plans for the ball season starting in November.
The already impressive results from last year were surpassed again this year. "Every third Viennese over the age of 15 is planning to attend a ball this year. In our record season 2019/20, that was only one in four. So after a break of two years, we could achieve a new record number of visitors this year," Grießler hopes to exceed the previous top result of 520,000 ball visitors: "550,000 tickets sold are possible."
The high number of tickets sold can be explained by the fact that about half of the people planning to attend a ball even intend to attend two or more.
Compared to previous ball seasons, which were characterised by Covid uncertainty, this year ball-goers want to prepare for events well in advance, rather than making spontaneous preparations as in previous years.
"These longer preparation times will also allow more industries to benefit from the ball season again, restaurants, hairdressers, tailors and many more will be called upon again to celebrate the perfect ball evening - and thus the value added by the balls will also increase again," says Grießler.
The 152 million euro turnover from the 2019/20 ball season could thus be exceeded. Grießler: "This year's ball season should bring in up to 170 million for the Viennese economy."
The Viennese dance schools can also confirm that the anticipation for the ball season is particularly high this year.
"The courses are already excellently booked, the Viennese clearly want to brush up on their dance skills before the balls," says Dancing Stars winner and spokesman for the Viennese dance schools Thomas Kraml, pleased with the full courses in the member companies: "Bookings from younger participants are particularly strong this year, very many students are just discovering their love of dancing."
This is also good for the new blood in their own ranks, just recently eight freshly qualified dance teachers and two dance masters successfully passed their exams.
The 2022/23 ball season will be opened quite traditionally on 11.11 at 11:11 a.m., as organiser and president of the Association of Viennese Dancing Schools, Karin Lemberger, reports: "The public prelude is also celebrating its comeback this year. We will ring in the carnival with our traditional quadrille on the Graben. And we are looking forward to lively audience participation, just like the last times."