Serviced Apartments - finally arriving in Switzerland for the benefitof all

Accommodation models are becoming increasingly hybrid. What began with the rapid spread of B & B continues with a growing number of serviced apartments. Thus, a globally widespread form of accommodation (finally) sets foot in Switzerland - for the benefit of the guests as well as the providers.

Overtourism - How do we not destroy what we travel for?

An exclusive market study by DGT and AIEST for the ITB Berlin

Speakers: Profs. Jürgen Schmude (President of DGT), Harald Pechlaner (President of AIEST), Christian Laesser (Secretary General of AIEST)

Tourism is threatening to suffocate itself: due to the limited space, further growth in tourism inevitably leads to ever more and ever greater conflicts in tourist destinations worldwide. A quantitative and qualitative study presented at ITB recently reported about the status quo of overtourism in selected European destination. What differences and similarities exist between urban and rural destinations, which measures offer possible solutions and which strategies do tourism experts regard as promising? The video includes a presentation of the study by Profs. Schmude and Pechlaner as well as an interview with me on possible measures for the communities affected by overtourism.

Please check out the video at Overtourism: Status Quo, Massnahmen, Best Practices europäischer Tourismus-Destinationen (in German), and my interview with NZZ: Wir haben das Reisen in den Genen.

Learning from dairy farmers means learning to win!

Dairy farmers are trying to regain dwindling margins.
Tourism should be acting like them.

No - I did not smoke too much. No, I am not an old Communist who - with the aim of "learning to win" - looks back romantically on Soviet-style socialism. Rather, in the last few days, two messages have gotten me to hit the keys and write this short column.

The WEF Tourism Competitiveness Report: Measuring the non-Measurable?!

This article discusses the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum in the context of existing research on this topic as well as from a methodological perspective. A positive ranking can be achieved when ranking the tourist competitiveness of individual countries, however, a critical examination of the procedure is appropriate. Main criticisms are in particular the missing embedding of the report into the existing research, the lack of traceability (rationalization) of the selection and weighting of the measured variables (which is partly arbitrary and demonstrably ignores important quantities), the type of data collection (survey and hard data) and their amalgamation. For this reason, the results may only be noted with a critical eye. This is particularly true for Switzerland, which has lost its appeal - despite having been in first place for some time - due to its price disadvantage. (©Christian Laesser. All rights reserved.)

How to waste less on vacation (Sara Dolnicar)

Do not teach but do nudge tourists to behave environmentally friendly!

Have a look at this very refreshing TedX by Sara Dolnicar from the University of Queensland.

There is hope and there are ways that one can nudge tourists to behave environmentally friendlier.

https://youtu.be/gtv4BHqEpN8