Matching priorities

Supporting entrepreneurship & increasing competitiveness

Exploit the diverse potential of tourism and strengthen the competitiveness of Germany as a tourist destination and its tourism industry, which is characterized by medium-sized companies, giving them the freedom to develop.

• Supporting Germany in the enhancement of its tourism segments of interest through capacity building activities.
• Coastal, maritime and inland waterway tourism: Enhancing research in the different areas of nautical tourism, in collaboration with external partners, e.g. European Boating Industry.
• Increasing participation in UNWTO Start-up Competitions, the world’s largest start-up competitions in tourism.
• Fostering participation in the UNWTO Digital Futures programme, that seeks to accelerate economic recovery of the tourism sector by scaling up innovative SMEs, unleashing digital technologies to create jobs and enhance future resilience in the linkages of the tourism value chain post COVID-19.
• Organization of Masterclasses focused on digital skills in collaboration with Amadeus, (better data analysis for better decision-making), Google and other global partners.

Education and training

Bridging the gap between the market demands and human capital availability. The German federal government prioritizes hospitality education.

UNWTO aims to scale-up education for supporting added value jobs worldwide.

• Training and education:
  • UNWTO Tourism Online Academy: scholarships granted to member states annually.
  • UNWTO TedQual: Quality Assurance for Tourism Education, Training and Research Programmes.
  • UNWTO Students’ League: initiative that supports country's young people in their preparation and engagement to help shape a better world. 
  • UNWTO international internship programme
• Youth Empowerment:
  • Global Youth Tourism Summit 2022: Germany was represented by 1 participant.

Sustainable development and management of tourism

Support an environmentally and climate-friendly development of tourism. Design a modern, barrier-free, reliable and sustainable mobility and digital infrastructure that takes into account the needs of travelers and the challenges posed by an increase in traffic.

• Engaging in different initiatives of the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme:
  • Global Tourism Plastics Initiative unites the tourism sector behind a common vision to address the root causes of plastic pollution. It enables businesses, governments, and other tourism stakeholders to lead by example in the shift towards a circular economy of plastics.
  • Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism aims to raise the climate ambition of tourism stakeholders and secure strong actions to support the global commitment to have emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050.
• Possible establishment of an observatory for the UNWTO International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories, monitoring sustainable tourism development at destination level.
• Ongoing process of development of a new standard in tourism, materialized in the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST), which takes into consideration the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of tourism.

Community impact

Strive for quality tourism that creates liveable spaces in harmony with nature and culture, contributes to the quality of life of all people - visitors as well as locals - and has a positive impact on the image of Germany abroad. Use the potential of tourism to sustainably strengthen economic development in other parts of the world and to contribute to peace, tolerance and international understanding.

• Possible organization of joint-initiatives, in particular on a regional scale.
• The UNWTO project ‘Centre Stage: Women’s empowerment during the COVID-19 recovery’, aims to strengthen, coordinate and focus work on gender equality in tourism governmental institutions and businesses as they recover from the pandemic and is currently being implemented with the support of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany and UN Women. Through the Centre Stage project, UNWTO supports 4 National Tourism Administrations, tourism businesses, NGOs and tourism organizations from Jordan, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.

Tourism Policy

Strategic goals of tourism policy:

1. Domestic value added is to be increased, thus fostering economic growth.
2. The quality of life of the people living in Germany is to be improved on a lasting basis.
3. Tourism is to foster international stability.

Fields of action:

1. continue to exploit the diverse potential of tourism
2. Strengthen the competitiveness of Germany as a tourism destination; Strengthen medium-sized tourism industry and leave free space for it to develop
3. Design modern, barrier-free, reliable and sustainable digital infrastructure that meets the needs of travelers, taking into account the challenges of increasing traffic
4. Promote the potential of tourism in other parts of the world to strengthen peace, tolerance and to contribute to international understanding
5. Support sustainable development of the tourism

Aim:

1. Reliable, less bureaucratic and competitive conditions for Germany as a tourism destination
2. Benefit international growth
3. Increase employment in tourism industry
4. Rural areas to become more developed and stable