City tourism continues to suffer heavily from pandemic aftermath

City tourism is still particularly struggling compared to rural destinations, said the director of Switzerland Tourism (ST) at a media conference in Zurich on Thursday. He could not emphasize enough the importance of long-distance markets in this regard: "Foreign guests love our cities. They come outside 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 in particular are very important here. However, 50 percent of hotel room nights have fallen away from these compared to the reference year 2019. "Switzerland is an exporting country, we are dependent on foreign countries in many industries. This is no different for tourism," he continued.

The performance of city tourism was "decent", considering how drastic the pandemic was for the tourism industry. And in many important markets, such as China, there are still lockdowns. Compared to mountain, lake and generally more rural destinations, however, the development is currently below average.

Running campaign to drive city tourism

The federal government had therefore also given ST a special mandate with a "Recovery Plan". In the course of this assignment, ST is to work primarily with foreign guests and once again strengthen city and business tourism. The organization is to focus on the issue of sustainability. To this end, various activities have already been launched, such as a campaign with the running shoe manufacturer On Running, which will run from now on for the next few weeks and is intended to "create a stir," 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)