Punks and rail chaos: Is Germany’s luxury island Sylt losing its rep?

Is Sylt, Germany’s north-west island in the North Sea long known as home to the country’s rich and famous, losing its reputation?

As the hotel, pub and tourism operators prepare for the upcoming summer season, they will be looking to see if the bad publicity repeats itself this year.

The island has been beset with punks, a racist brawl in an upmarket pub and chaos on the railway line – stories that have not only dominated local media but also coverage nationwide.

So much so that Sylt’s highly polished luxury brand is now seen a less glamorous by some.

For now, tourists are defying the Sylt headlines

“Our guests are very good at distinguishing when Sylt is just an attention-grabbing backdrop to national issues, and when it’s about real island issues and what that has to do with their holiday,” Moritz Luft, managing director of Sylt Marketing GmbH (SMG), tells dpa.

Despite the negative stories, the island’s holidaymakers remained unfazed, as the stable number of overnight stays for 2024 shows.

“In view of the tense overall economic situation, we see this as a success,” Luft said. He does not currently see the island’s image as being threatened by the negative headlines.

For decades, it has been shaped by the natural charisma of Sylt and the hospitality and quality standards of its guests – which he sees as “solidified, even in challenging times.”

Sylt’s charisma attracts people

“The often extensive and sometimes critical media coverage has less of an influence on the local population than it sometimes appears to,” Florian Korte, spokesman for the city of Sylt, told the dpa.

It is sometimes “challenging to reconcile the different interests of business, politics and tourism, as well as those of the citizens,” he said. That’s because there is a nationwide interest in what is happening on the popular North Sea island – especially from the tabloids.

Luxury property buyers sometimes deterred

A Sylt real estate agent sees the threat to the brand more from within than from outside. Sylt, as a product, has to “improve again,” Peter Peters told the dpa.

He thinks some things on the island are outdated and the destination “has to become a place where everyone can enjoy themselves again.”

For example, there is a lack of interesting meeting places and places for different age groups, he notes.

“Redesign the ageing promenade, build a beach club there and organize parties on the beach,” says the Sylt resident.

He misses the relaxed atmosphere and sees a lot of things on the island blocked by rules and regulations. He therefore considers developments towards a car-free island for environmental reasons to be of little benefit.

The sometimes chaotic conditions on the railway line to and from Sylt – with unpunctual and cancelled trains, partially blocked toilets and dirty carriages – also have an indirect effect on the island’s property market, he believes.

“The railway is making it less attractive for commuters, as well as for the people of Sylt and their guests, and will therefore become a problem,” he said.

Last summer’s racism scandal, in which young people were caught on video chanting right-wing slogans at the island’s Pony nightclub in the posh town of Kampen, did not deter buyers of luxury real estate, according to estate agents.

Prices for real estate on Sylt have fallen by about 20% for single family homes in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the real estate website Immoportal. But some say that is due to the general economic recession in the country and to interest rate policy.

The A-listers must stay

“As with any good brand management, it’s a balancing act. Sylt has to pay close attention to the distribution within its guest structure,” Professor Arnd Zschiesche tells dpa.

He holds a professorship in marketing at the West Coast University of Applied Sciences in Heide and is also co-founder of the Hamburg-based Brand Development Office and director at the Institute for Brand Sociology.

Whether and how the events affect the Sylt brand will become apparent in the long term.

But Zschiesche says it is important that enough well-known celebrities, such as football coach Jürgen Klopp or the head of the pro-business Free Democratic Party Christian Lindner come to the island. Others are attracted by the myth of an A-list island, he says.

But without press coverage, Sylt would just be another island

He argues that the city needs to “to do everything” it can “to prevent this from tipping over” so that for example “only ‘normal’ people” are seen as living on Sylt.

“It needs the real celebrities and it is important to make sure that it stays that way.” According to the expert, the island needs a constant supply of descendants of the founders of the Sylt myth – German socialite Gunter Sachs and French actress Brigitte Bardot – in order to retain its appeal.

The brand was not something the islanders initially came up with” said Zschiesche.

Sylt needs the media and the media needs Sylt

Sylt was once again the focus of tabloid attention last year when Lindner, then the German finance minister, got married on the island.

The brand expert said the Lindner wedding was helpful for Sylt as a brand, “because it confirmed all the social prejudices that characterize this island and make it a point of polarization – both negative and positive.”

He believes that a defining feature of strong brands is that they polarize. With this in mind, Zschiesche says punks, who have been camping on Sylt for the third summer in a row, and have caused resentment among some, are “less dangerous for the island’s image than mass tourism.”

He thinks the punks, with their extreme polarization, have actually strengthened the Sylt brand as a short-term effect because they are polarizing.

“Strong brands thrive on polarization; they need the concept of the enemy to strengthen their own image.”