How “Feel Good” positions, promotes Germany as a sustainable tourism destination

As Innov­a­tions Man­ager for the Ger­man Nation­al Tour­ist Board, Olaf Schlieper is the chief scout for issues and trends in travel & tour­ism. One area he is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in is sus­tain­ab­il­ity. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Mr Schlieper gives us an idea as to why and how Ger­many is pos­i­tion­ing itself as a sus­tain­able destination. 

Trans­form­ing tour­ism in a sus­tain­able way is one of our sec­tor’s greatest chal­lenges. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is seen by many coun­tries as an import­ant com­pet­it­ive factor without which tour­ism has no future.

For many soph­ist­ic­ated and exper­i­enced trav­el­lers — more now than ever before — sus­tain­ab­il­ity is seen as an indic­at­or of qual­ity that they can­not do without. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, for them, is the most import­ant cri­terion in their decision-mak­ing pro­cess for their accom­mod­a­tion, excur­sion, tour, or whatever tour­ism product. Accord­ingly, des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing cam­paigns tar­get­ing these trav­el­lers must reflect the envir­on­ment­al and social qual­it­ies (and qual­ity) they seek.

Through­out this coronavir­us crisis, all trav­el­lers — exper­i­enced and pro­spect­ive alike — must sorely miss what once they may have taken for gran­ted. They may now spend even more time think­ing about the qual­ity, reli­ab­il­ity, region­al­ity, authen­ti­city, enjoy­ment, and over­all sense of well-being embed­ded in the respons­ibly-pro­duced products and exper­i­ences that they crave.

Pre-pan­dem­ic stud­ies had shown that most trav­el­lers would prefer sus­tain­able travel products. But it was nev­er easy for them to find con­vin­cing offers in this seg­ment. There were, and still are only a few ref­er­ence sites or book­ing plat­forms that provide suf­fi­cient reli­able inform­a­tion on sus­tain­able products. 

Fur­ther­more, it is dif­fi­cult for many pro­spect­ive trav­el­lers to eval­u­ate sus­tain­able offers and dis­tin­guish between them in terms of their qual­ity. This is com­plic­ated by clichéd mis­ap­pre­hen­sions they may have, such as “Sus­tain­able products are more expens­ive”, or “Sus­tain­able products offer lower levels of ser­vice and comfort”. 

Our feel-good solution

For many years now, the Ger­man Nation­al Tour­ist Board (GNTB) has been com­mit­ted to the vari­ous aspects and chal­lenges of sus­tain­ab­il­ity. These range from access­ib­il­ity for the dif­fer­ently-abled to cli­mate-friendly trans­port to gast­ro­nomy. So there are already many high-qual­ity sus­tain­able tour­ism products avail­able in Germany. 

To make these more vis­ible, the GNTB has launched a new micros­ite on sus­tain­able tour­ism called “Feel Good”, which is designed to make the abstract top­ic of sus­tain­ab­il­ity more tan­gible for any­one inter­ested in Des­tin­a­tion Germany. 

It’s “Feel Good” because its com­mu­nic­a­tion is focussed on val­ues import­ant to the cus­tom­er. And rather than point­ing fin­gers, the tone of the con­tent guides and demon­strates and shows users that sus­tain­able tour­ism is asso­ci­ated not only with qual­ity, but also with enjoy­ment and an over­all “feel-good” factor.

Apart from that, “Feel Good” pro­motes products that have pos­it­ive eco­lo­gic­al, eco­nom­ic, and social effects; those that are exem­plary “beacons of sus­tain­able tour­ism”. Fea­tured products — regions, cit­ies, trans­port, exper­i­ences, and accom­mod­a­tion — have been selec­ted by GNTB in col­lab­or­a­tion with region­al mar­ket­ing organ­isa­tions and sus­tain­ab­il­ity spe­cial­ists. There is also a sec­tion, “Our spe­cial Feel­Good tips”, that con­tains addi­tion­al sug­ges­tions for a sus­tain­able holiday. 

Cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­grams offer a use­ful yard­stick in this respect. For the cus­tom­er, how­ever, the vari­ety of such seals and schemes is con­fus­ing: What do the seals check? How do they dif­fer? Which of the seals are cred­ible? Togeth­er with experts, the GNTB has there­fore cre­ated the “green travel map” for Ger­many. It is based on a qual­ity selec­tion of sus­tain­ab­il­ity certificates. 

Cus­tom­ers, tour oper­at­ors, journ­al­ists and oth­ers can find sus­tain­able tour­ism products and offers with just a few clicks. They include a wide range of accom­mod­a­tion — from eco-camp­ing to high-class hotels. The fea­tured stock on the web­site is not fixed, but can grow as soon as new exem­plary products become known and meet the qual­ity criteria. 

In addi­tion, con­tent will be sup­ple­men­ted by videos about people pas­sion­ate about sus­tain­ab­il­ity. We will pro­duce films about 16 people, including: 

• The dir­ect­or of the Klima­haus (cli­mate house), where one can learn a lot about the dif­fer­ent cli­mate zones on earth and the (neg­at­ive) influ­ence of human beings on nature and culture/traditions;
• MOIA in the city of Ham­burg, the ride shar­ing ser­vice with a brand new access­ible elec­tric van which they developed togeth­er with their clients;
• Rangers of nation­al parks;
• Own­ers of sus­tain­able hotels and res­taur­ants; and
• Tour guides who spe­cial­ise in sus­tain­ab­il­ity, et cet­era.

These films will enrich the con­tent of the site and make it even easi­er to under­stand what sus­tain­ab­il­ity is about, why it is import­ant, and how it can make trav­el­lers “FEEL GOOD”!

“Feel Good” will be pro­moted extens­ively and intens­ively via social media, news­let­ter, and cross-media cam­paigns, thereby embed­ding sus­tain­ab­il­ity even deep­er into the brand essence of Des­tin­a­tion Germany. 

Fea­tured image (top of post): Couple at an access­ible view­point over­look­ing Saarschleife (Saar Loop) in the Ger­man region of “Saar­land”, which is cer­ti­fi­ably sus­tain­able. Image by Jens Wegen­er; sup­plied by GNTB.

About the author

Olaf Schlieper has served the Ger­man Nation­al Tour­ist Board as Innov­a­tions Man­ager since 2013. In that role he is respons­ible for scout­ing trends and devel­op­ing strategies for the sus­tain­ab­il­ity and access­ib­il­ity of Des­tin­a­tion Ger­many, includ­ing the devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion of tour­ism products in col­lab­or­a­tion with Ger­man travel experts. Organ­ising “Access­ible Tour­ism Day” at ITB Ber­lin is a respons­ib­il­ity of which Olaf is par­tic­u­larly proud. Before being appoin­ted Innov­a­tions Man­ager, Olaf served GNTB in media man­age­ment and online mar­ket­ing roles.