city ​​trip

A city trip is a journey in which the exploration of a city and its culture, architecture , entertainment, its events, gastronomy and shopping opportunities are in the foreground.

The trip can be started as a package tour or individually . The former is usually booked with tour operators or travel agencies , the latter compiled by the traveler himself.

history

City trips have a long historical tradition. Important cities were the destination of many pilgrimages and the Grand Tour of young aristocrats, which has been mandatory since the Renaissance . Business, congress and political trips have always mainly led to cities. Typical examples of this are the Council of Trent , the Reichstag , the Leipzig Trade Fair or the Congress of Vienna .

Overall, however, the development of tourism as a mass movement is not tied to the cultural characteristics of cities. Rather, early mass tourism went hand in hand with the flight from cities. For a long time, tourism research had taken city trips and city tourism for granted and not specifically considered them. It wasn't until the 1980s that tourism science began to deal with city trips.

Cities as travel destinations differ significantly from travel destinations by the sea or in rural areas. In cities, the difference between travelers and visitors as target groups for offers and activities is much smaller than in rural destinations or in resorts . Special attractions are often equally interesting for both groups. The bigger the city, the less it will be possible to distinguish between visitors and residents. In cities, culture, gastronomy and entertainment businesses are seldom aimed directly or even exclusively at the tourist public; the same applies to urban open spaces and recreational areas such as parks, amusement parks, zoos, etc. Due to this close connection and the shared use of infrastructure, many questions are raised, which concern urban tourism are part of general urban policy and are not primarily treated as tourism issues.

This development of city tourism is increasingly leading to an intensified scientific examination of the effects that city trips have on city districts that do not have traditional sights, but rather that have a hip image due to the density of cultural and commercial (retail, gastronomy) offers . In this context, the term touristification was coined, which, based on gentrification, describes the change in the population and supply structures in city districts as a result of increasing tourism.

Travel motifs

The most important motive for city trips is the desire to visit a unique and interesting place. Due to their prestige, cultural and social attractions occupy a special position. Even for the young aristocrats who toured Europe as part of the Grand Tour, the cultural assets of the Italian Renaissance cities were important destinations.

Today the encounter with traditional and modern culture is a motor for urban tourism development. Cultural and event offers are the most important attractions of cities: A coherent and special cityscape, important museums or monuments, markets, coffee houses, special bars, music or theater offers are among them. Cities are visited because of their atmosphere, their “flair”. They are places of cultural accumulation. The cultural attractions and activities are usually concentrated in the city centers. However, other offers are also increasingly becoming important factors for city trips, such as events and shopping opportunities.

While city tourism - mostly combined with educational trips - had long been common for the nobility , it only began for broader strata in the 18th century, triggered by the increasing thirst for education of the bourgeoisie . Occasionally it was also practiced by traveling journeymen, for which Ludwig Funder's autobiography is a geographically and literarily significant example.

Packages (package tours)

City tourism, which also includes business and congress trips, is in increasing demand. Most travelers rate the diversity of a city, short or cultural trip higher than that of many other forms of vacation. Special programs and accommodation (e.g. overnight stay in a palazzo in Venice or a mansion near Dublin) are offered. Travel providers see a new trend and opportunities for success for city tourism.

City trips offered as a package for individuals or groups are divided into specific class and youth trips, study and educational trips, senior trips and event trips, depending on the target audience. The main feature and advantage of such a trip is that at least arrival and departure as well as accommodation, often also program items such as city tours, city hikes, museum or castle tours, theater or concert visits and excursions are offered for a total price. The tour operator can often offer very favorable basic prices ( xxxxstadt from 99 euros ) by purchasing services in bulk . The importance of packages (all-inclusive arrangements) is often very different depending on the distance between the guest's home and travel destination, but is generally declining due to the increasing number of direct bookings on the Internet.

Individual city trips

The advantage of an individual city trip is that the traveler does not follow a predetermined program, but rather determines the sightseeing program (if he wants one), the itinerary and its rhythm largely by himself. Many travelers find out about their travel destination on the Internet before they start their journey, especially if they are visiting a city for the first time. More and more frequently, not (only) the websites of the cities or their official tourism offices, but rather information platforms operated according to the Web 2.0 philosophy, on which every holidaymaker can present or rate their experiences, are visited. Popular sources of information are also printed travel guides and so-called audio city guides, in which the sights are described in the form of audio clips on an MP3 player. The most important decision-making impulse for a particular city remains - as guest surveys show - word of mouth (friends or relatives thought it was very nice there) .

There is currently an increasing trend towards individual city trips, which is due, among other things, to the increasing number of online travel agencies, the increased use of last-minute and online tickets and the web presence of numerous hotels, hotel reservation centers and electronic ticket offices that offer customers the Facilitate independent choice and booking of the desired means of transport, accommodation and desired tickets for events according to their own preferences.

Development in the present

See also : List of the most visited cities

City trips have increased significantly in recent years. An average annual growth of 3% was calculated for European cities for the years 1995 to 2005. The ten most important European travel destinations are: {including Germans 2012}

• London (2006: 50.4 million overnight stays) {1.4 million}
• Paris (2010: 35.8 million) {1.1 million}
• Berlin (2010: 20.8 million) {9.1 million}
• Rome (2010: 20.4 million) {0.4 million}
• Barcelona (2010: 15.3m) {0.5m}
• Madrid (2010: 15.2 million) {0.3 million}
• Prague (2010: 12.1 million) {0.8 million}
• Istanbul (2013: 10 million)
• Munich (2010: 11.1 million) {5.6 million}
• Vienna (2012: 12.3 million) {2.4 million}
• Dublin (2007: 9.6 million)
• Amsterdam (2012: 12.5 million) {0.9 million}
• Hamburg (---) {4.7 million}

The number of overnight stays published by the cities mostly does not include visits to friends and relatives (VFRs = Visits of Friends and Relatives) , which are far more common in cities than in rural tourist resorts, but do so in London and Dublin . Analogous to the European Cities' Visitors Report 2008 , published by European Cities Marketing, Dijon 2008, the London and Dublin figures were therefore corrected to (not by!) 40% of the reported results for the purpose of a fair comparison.

Between the development of the route network of low cost airlines (Low Cost Carriers) and Nächtigungsresultaten cities is a clear relationship was observed. In the mid-1990s, the number of overnight stays rose on the Iberian Peninsula, while there are currently signs of a strong orientation towards Eastern Europe. In the future, an increased volume of travel is expected in non-European countries (North African Mediterranean coast, US east coast).

In addition to the range of low-cost airlines, the increasing flexibility of working hours (trend towards short holidays) and the increasing proportion of childless and single households are reasons for the growth of city trips. In recent years, cities have been increasingly marketing and / or orienting themselves towards events and major events in order to increase their attractiveness.

The oil price , which has risen sharply since 2007, gives rise to fears that flights will again become significantly more expensive in the future. This would have a significant impact on international city tourism. The effects of the global economic crisis in autumn 2008 on city tourism were initially unclear; losses were expected in the business travel segment. According to a study by the management consultancy Roland Berger Strategy Consultants , there were 3.5 percent fewer overnight stays in European capitals in the crisis year 2009 . In addition, in cities like Berlin there is resistance to the increasing “ touristisation ” of the local population in relation to the excesses of city tourism.

literature

• Dennis R. Judd, Susan S. Fainstein (Eds.): The Tourist City. Yale University Press, London 1999, ISBN 978-0-300-07846-6 (English).
• Silke Landgrebe, Peter Schnell (Ed.): City tourism. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-486-57677-1 .
• Burkhart Lauterbach : City tourism - cultural studies. An introduction. (= Culture transfer - everyday cultural contributions. Volume 7). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8260-5195-1 .
• Hans-Jörg Weber: The paradox of city tourism: between mass tourism and individuality - A study on tourism practices and mobility using GPS and questionnaire data as well as travel guide literature using the example of the city of Berlin. Mensch und Buch Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86387-261-8 .
• Karl W. Wöber: City Tourism 2002. Proceedings of European Cities Tourism's International Conference in Vienna, Austria, 2002. Springer, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-211-83831-0 (English).

Web links

• The official tourism websites of 300 European cities
• Marketing organization for city and congress tourism experts
• Tourism results of European countries and cities
• Observatoire du Tourisme (French)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lily M. Hoffman, Susan S. Fainstein, Dennis R. Judd: Cities and Visitors: Regulating People, Markets, and City Space . Wiley-Blackwell 2003, ISBN 978-1-4051-0059-5
2. ^ Sandra Huning, Johannes Novy: Tourism as an Engine of Neighborhood Regeneration? Working paper, Center for Metropolitan Studies of the TU Berlin, 2006 ( full text ( memento of the original from March 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove it Note .; PDF; 340 kB) 
3. ↑ Lukas Foljanty, Verena Pfeiffer: Contribution to the topic of touristification on urbanophil.net
4. ^ Annual report 2006 of the Observatoire du Tourisme
5. ↑ Total overnight stays according to the TourMIS database , figures for London and Dublin corrected
6. ↑ Tim Freytag: City tourism in major European cities. In: disP 2/2007 ( full text ( memento of the original from January 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) 
7. ↑ City tourism - Berliner Monopoly , Tagesspiegel.de, April 8, 2012, permissible retrieved on April 16, 2012