Workshop with European Cities Marketing’s Benchmarking Group (ECM): What direction is European city tourism heading in?

November 22, 2018. Numerous experts from European Cities Marketing (ECM) took up the Vienna Tourist Board’s invitation to participate in a workshop in November 2018 as part of the measures to formulate the Vienna Visitor Economy Strategy 2025.

An overview of the current topics touched on by the strategic process gave the European and Viennese experts the opportunity to engage in extensive discussions on the range of developments in tourism in other European cities including Paris, London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Munich and Berlin. The exchanges centered on the question of how to bring new private and public partners on board in the interests of the visitor economy, as well as on issues surrounding the development of measures to publicize the advantages of tourism and make them more visible, and the implementation of meaningful key performance indicators for Vienna’s future destination strategy.

The experts from the participating cities were supportive of the primary thrusts of Vienna’s strategy and formulated several ideas and suggestions to bear in mind when fine-tuning the pioneering concept. Selected statements by participants:

• “Close involvement of residents is desirable. This certainly calls for sufficient financial and human resources to facilitate regular exchange between residents and private initiatives.”
• “Co-creation and open-innovation projects are an interesting means of getting residents closely involved in the development and implementation of projects. The Reinventer Paris program serves an example of a particularly complex co-creation project. Initiated in 2014, the regular sessions are designed to collect suggestions regarding the possible utilization of unused public spaces. The winning contributions are then implemented by the teams that submitted them.”
• "Effective implementation of the strategy calls for clear targets with respect to the scope of involvement of the different stakeholders when it comes to carrying through the individual processes. In some cases, creating awareness of the value added by the visitor economy will be enough, while other participants represent potential partners for alliances and collaborations for implementing the strategy.“
• "Competitions hold a great deal of potential when it comes to bringing in and securing the direct involvement of new public and private participants in implementing the strategy. One such initiative was a competition to find London's first Borough of Culture and increase the focus on cultural and tourist assets outside the center of the city and, in doing so, increase their attractiveness.”