Zakopane — the winter destination for Muslims in the know
A small Polish mountain resort has been stunned to find itself flooded with tourists from the Gulf
–
Agata Wojtowicz, president of Tatra Chamber of Commerce (TIG) in Zakopane, struggles to explain the phenomenon. A small Polish resort town nestled at the foot of the Tatra mountains, Zakopane was popular with tuberculosis patients in the late 1800s. In the 1900s, it was favoured by avant garde artists, including Stanisław Witkiewicz and the sculptor Władysław Hasior. But in the past five years it has unexpectedly emerged as a major tourist destination for holidaymakers from the Gulf and, increasingly, Muslims from across Europe.
“I’ll tell you how it happened but you won’t believe me. Nobody ever does,” Wojtowicz said.
“People expect there to have been some massive advertisement campaign, some clever marketing, but we had none of this. It’s all been a big accident. We are as surprised as everyone else.”
Little more than 2,000 Muslims live in Poland, but in Zakopane the billboards are written in Arabic and Polish — often to the exclusion of English — and green halal signs dot the high street. Just off its bustling market street where embroidered woollen scarfs, handmade leather shoes and local cheeses are sold from chiselled wooden huts, a group of young women in hijabs enjoy hamburgers at Bifalo Steakhouse, which boasts an entirely halal menu.
“It’s been easier to find halal food in Zakopane than anywhere else I’ve visited in central Europe,” said Alya Amerrudin, a 24-year-old computer science student at the University of Birmingham. “And it’s not just kebab takeaways, either. It’s a nice restaurant like this.”
Amerrudin, who is originally from Malaysia, heard about Zakopane from a non-Muslim friend who described it as an affordable alternative to the Alps. She gathered a group of friends and they’ve come for a weekend to hike to the Morskie Oko lake and enjoy the snow.
“We were a bit confused, actually,” added Dina Nzerri. “We saw a lot of halal signs but there don’t seem to be that many Muslims here.”
Zakopane and its population of 30,000 are part of the Góral — a region in the Polish highlands with distinct dialect and traditions. Here, even Polish visitors can be labelled “ceper”, a dismissive term that translates as inexperienced mountaineer. But despite this lukewarm attitude to outsiders, tourism has become Zakopane’s main source of revenue.
Close to 5 million people visited the Tatra mountains in 2024, of which the TIG estimates Gulf nationals made up around 10%. Since 2020, Gulf citizens have been the fastest-growing group of tourists travelling to the region and their interest doesn’t seem to be waning.
Wojtowicz traces the trend to 2018, when the airline Flydubai launched daily flights between Dubai and Kraków, a Polish city two hours drive from Zakopane. Wojtowicz recalls that Emirati tour operators soon followed suit and videos of Zakopane’s wooden cottages and lush landscapes started to spread across Arabic social media. When Covid travel restrictions were lifted in 2022, a steady stream of Gulf tourists began to pour in.
“I’m in love with Poland, I feel so happy, and just feel very balanced. It is very vibrant but still feels very safe,” said Hussam Zakhur, an aspiring content creator from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who spent two days in Zakopane at the end of January. Zakhur was keen to visit after hearing of the region’s beauty and comparative affordability. “The nature is incredible. You have huge forests, rivers everywhere. In Saudi we have the opposite: we have deserts, sands and not a single river.”
The highlight of Zakhur’s trip, however, was the locals. “I met two people running a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. They made me feel super-good. One of them showed me around the area. He was like 60 or 70. He gave me a metal statue of a bison. I brought it back with me to Riyadh.” He tears up at the memory.
Zakhur does have a few notes. Zakopane’s hotels could include spray bidets in the bathrooms. He also thinks there could be more prayer spaces available in public areas. But the biggest inconvenience was getting a visa, which Zakhur says is much more difficult than for other Schengen countries. “You have to go to the consulate in person. You have to pay in cash and it takes a very long time. In Saudi we’re used to doing everything digitally, so this does not leave a good impression.”
He’s eager to return for a longer visit so he can better immerse himself in nature, but next time Zakhur will do what most Saudi tourists visiting Poland do and obtain a visa from a different Schengen country before travelling. “If you do it through the French embassy you can upload everything online and it only takes a few days,” he said.
At Nosalowy Park, a five-star boutique hotel, visitors from the Gulf now make up half of the foreign guests. Wiktor Wróbel, chief executive of the hotel’s parent company Nosalowy Dwór, is delighted with his new clientele. “They are very good clients who are more likely to take advantage of all the services the hotel has to offer, such as the spa, organised or packaged activities, restaurants. Ultimately, as a hotelier that is what you are after, as this allows you to offer a more comprehensive service to your guests and maximise your revenue.”
It’s not just Zakopane’s hospitality industry that is benefiting from its blossoming relationship with the Gulf. Three years ago, chef Mateusz Malinowski — owner of the Bifalo Steakhouse — began exporting premium Polish meat. Initially, most of his export clients were in Italy and France but the Gulf market proved less crowded and more open to Polish produce. Malinowski is now one of the few Polish meat producers able to export products to Gulf countries, and two months ago opened a meat shop in Kuwait.
Not everyone in Zakopane has been so quick to welcome Muslim business. Taxi drivers still grumble about tourists slaughtering sheep in their hotel rooms and women bathing in swimming pools fully clothed. But overall, Wojtowicz is surprised by how well the town is adapting. Two years ago she was considering organising cultural sensitivity courses for hospitality staff. Now she thinks that’s no longer necessary.
“These new visitors changed our town, but we are changing too. The culture here can be quite hermetic and insular. We have become more open. We have become more tolerant, I think,” she said, adding that this cultural appreciation is starting to flow both ways.
“I see more and more people here travelling to Qatar for holidays. People might have gone abroad to Italy, maybe on a pilgrimage with the parish priest, not a beach in Dubai. Twenty years ago that was unthinkable.”
Topics
Get the Hyphen weekly
Subscribe to Hyphen’s weekly round-up for insightful reportage, commentary and the latest arts and lifestyle coverage, from across the UK and Europe
This form may not be visible due to adblockers, or JavaScript not being enabled.