City tourism continues to suffer heavily from pandemic aftermath
Despite a slight summer recovery from the pandemic, the Swiss tourism industry is still struggling with numerous challenges. City and business tourism in particular continues to be drastically affected.
City tourism is still struggling in comparison to rural destinations, said the Director of Switzerland Tourism (ST) at a media conference in Zurich on Thursday. He could not emphasize the importance of long-distance markets enough: "Foreign guests love our cities. They also come outside the school vacations, they book well in advance, they come even when the weather is not excellent and they book upper categories."
For this reason, Swiss city tourism is heavily dependent on long-distance visitors. Overseas guests are particularly important here. Compared to the reference year 2019, however, 50 percent of hotel overnight stays have been lost. "Switzerland is an export country; we are dependent on foreign countries in many sectors. This is no different for tourism," he continued.
The performance of city tourism is "decent", considering how drastic the pandemic has been for the tourism industry. And in many important markets, such as China, there are still lockdowns. However, compared to mountain, lake and generally more rural destinations, the development is currently below average.
Running campaign to boost city tourism
The federal government has therefore also given ST a special mandate with a "recovery plan". As part of this mandate, ST is to focus primarily on foreign guests and strengthen city and business tourism once again. The organization is to focus on the topic of sustainability. Various activities have already been launched to this end, such as a campaign with running shoe manufacturer On Running, which will run for the next few weeks with immediate effect and is intended to "generate momentum", as the ST director explained.
Under the motto "Run the Swiss Cities", Swiss cities are presented from the perspective of joggers and jogging routes are presented, some of them by prominent athletes (Werbewoche.ch reported). This should attract business and leisure travelers to the cities. (SDA)
