Qingdao Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit 2018 Exclusive Interview: Welcome Culture of Berlin

Hospitality features of city inhabitants shape a city's image

There never is one single approach that works for all cities. Each city has to develop its own USPs. A city needs to have a good product to get attention from travelers. History, interesting tourist attractions etc, but also a good infrastructure with hotels in different categories, professional service partners and of course excellent service quality on all levels. Tourists should use all available sources to get as much information about a destination as possible before booking. There are many tourism forums on the internet today, so with good research time tourists can get many ideas and recommendations from other experienced travelers, but also the tourist offices from the cities. So it is important for cities to maintain a modern, fast, diverse, helpful website with information, pictures and also booking options.

As said before each city has to determine its USPs and then promote them. Image can be created on many levels and it is something that the whole city can influence, not only the tourism administration. Tourism always means that everyone in a city has to be a good host. Berlin for example has a very good “Welcome Culture”. People are open minded, respectful and very international. That is an important basis to welcome people from all over the world. Image then also can be created through thoughtful marketing campaigns and emotional claims of course.

It is very important to balance the interests between visitors and local inhabitants

City tourism always will be a major part of worldwide tourism. But with the increasing number of travelers in the years to come challenges for cities to cope with rising visitor numbers also increase. It will be more and more important to balance the interests of travelers and local people. In many cities “overtourism” already is a big issue. That can be avoided by thoughtful long-term tourism development and channeling traffic to lower peak seasons and developing new attractions and creating more sustainable offers and go from mass tourism to quality tourism.

International collaboration with other cities is important to exchange ideas and experiences and to learn from each other. But collaborations also work well when it comes to joint marketing activities and campaigns to attract travelers. Berlin has worked with many cities to do that. In Germany in a marketing cooperation called “Magic Cities Germany”, but also with cities like Budapest, Prague, Vienna to promote city combinations for trips to Central Europe.

Berlin is a proud founding member of WTCF and supports all WTCF activities. WTCF has an important role in giving cities worldwide a platform to exchange information, market data and discuss topics that are important for the tourism industry in any city. WTCF also can support cities through its wide network and bring cities and suppliers together.