Is it the “end of tourism” for Copenhagen?

This was­n’t some dysto­pi­an present in which the eco­nom­ic extern­al­it­ies of the travel & tour­ism industry have to be paid for and the emer­gent middle-class masses of Asia are forced to stay at home.

Not at all.

It was a slick new state­ment of strategy that would lever­age the vir­tu­al word-of-mouth of social media, mine big data, tap growth mar­kets, tar­get demand for authen­ti­city, and, at least rhet­or­ic­ally, speak the lan­guage of col­lab­or­a­tion and inclus­ive growth.

“By declar­ing ‘loc­al­hood for every­one’, Won­der­ful Copen­ha­gen encour­ages its des­tin­a­tion to think of its vis­it­ors as tem­por­ary res­id­ents, instead of as tour­ists,” Des­tin­a­tion Think’s Chief Strategist Wil­li­am Bak­ker said.

“As a res­id­ent, you’re part of the com­munity, and you con­trib­ute to it. The shift here is that the tour­ism industry can also help vis­it­ors add value to the com­munity, instead of ask­ing per­man­ent res­id­ents to exchange their qual­ity of life for money.”

Bak­ker was part of the con­sult­ing team led by city mar­ket­ing expert Frank Cuypers that reviewed Won­der­ful Copenhagen’s strategy before its release.

The End of Tour­ism strategy has five “stra­tegic coordinates”:

Shareability is king

“With the pro­lif­er­a­tion of social media, inform­a­tion is now cre­ated by any­one and made avail­able to every­one … Today, we as a Des­tin­a­tion Mar­ket­ing Organ­iz­a­tion (DMO) need to enable the rel­ev­ant con­ver­sa­tion through share­able des­tin­a­tion moments and exper­i­ences, adding value through oth­ers to cre­ate a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with the brand essence – the loc­al­hood – of our destination.”

Once attracted, twice valued

“New digit­al sources of data allow us to move closer to vis­it­ors and engage bey­ond the ini­tial attrac­tion. Through updated insights of vis­it­ors’ move­ment and con­sump­tion pat­terns, we can identi­fy the weak points of our des­tin­a­tion and its products, remove these road­b­locks and gen­er­ate more value […] thereby increas­ing their propensity to recom­mend our des­tin­a­tion and return.”

Tomorrow’s business today

“By 2020, inter­na­tion­al pas­sen­ger arrivals are expec­ted to reach 1.6 bil­lion people glob­ally […] driv­en by a new pop­u­la­tion of trav­el­lers, espe­cially from the Asi­an region. Long-term invest­ment is required today to ensure the busi­ness of these future growth mar­kets tomorrow.”

Co-innovation at heart

“The big fish no longer eat the small: instead, the fast fish eat the slow. The digit­al eco­nomy allows new play­ers to enter the mar­ket, leav­ing innov­a­tion as an increas­ingly open pro­cess. To Won­der­ful Copen­ha­gen, col­lab­or­at­ive net­works have and con­tin­ue to be a pre­val­ent mod­us operandi […] we need to ensure suf­fi­cient agil­ity with­in our exist­ing net­works to think in new ways and adapt to our new com­pet­it­ive landscape.”

People-based growth

CPH_born’n’raised: The loc­al Har­vest Fest­iv­al has finally begun. Stop by if you’re in the neigh­bor­hood. Everyone’s wel­come. #Street­party #Room­For­Fun #StopBy #Bring­Y­ourFriends #Loc­al­hood­ForEvery­one

“As one of the world’s most liv­able cit­ies and regions, Great­er Copen­ha­gen offers strong appeal to trav­el­lers, espe­cially in an era of seek­ing out tem­por­ary loc­al­hood […] The deliv­ery of an authen­t­ic exper­i­ence of a liv­able des­tin­a­tion depends on the loc­als […] and a des­tin­a­tion in which loc­als inter­act with vis­it­ors in a way that [con­trib­utes to liv­ab­il­ity]. While strength­en­ing our efforts to attract more vis­it­ors, we increas­ingly need to do so from a people-based growth per­spect­ive: grow­ing not only to increase the num­ber of vis­it­ors, but also to […] expand the value of vis­it­ors both to soci­ety at large and on a human scale.”

None of these are new ideas by any means, but kudos to the copy­writers for the bold­ness of their pro­nounce­ment, which, at the very least, attrac­ted this blo­g’s atten­tion and belated coverage.

It isn’t the end of tour­ism, of course. How­ever the way it is being talked about in Den­mark might help change how the industry is talked about every­where; as every­one’s business.

Down­load the ‘Won­der­ful Copen­ha­gen Strategy 2020’.