The best stats you´ve ever seen

Sometimes some facts & figures can change your view of the world… Tourism development  is often seen as a sustainable way out of poverty. This week Natural is educating 143 tour operators from 28 developing countries on the Scandinavian tourism market under the flag of CBI´s Export Coaching Program in Rotterdam.
Enjoy Hans Rosling´s inspirational speech at [...]

7 Growth industries characteristics, part 3: Requirements

Sweden is becoming more and more unknown among foreigners, accordning to a recently published report by The Swedish Institute. “The reason for this is that the choice of countries being investigated changed compared to previous years” says Olle Wästberg, SI Director-General. “The other reason is that the competition has become tougher as a result of globalization.” [...]

Here we go again

As I´ve mentioned in previous postings, Sweden is investing hundreds of millions of kronor in tourism development all over the country nowadays. It´s everything from building the worlds biggest wooden moose to indoor rapids, restored viking villages and witch hotels. Projects aimed to increase tourism in rural areas of Sweden. Sounds fine in days of [...]

Investment boom in tourism

Recession times are investment times, an old friend said to me a while ago. It seems to be true, at least within tourism. Huge amounts are invested in tourism these days and there´s more to come.
As an industry, tourism is different from other markets. Tourism requires more cooperation between
suppliers to put together packages to a total [...]

7 Growth industries characteristics, part 2: pricing

Are you one of the lucky guys that are running a tourism business with more demand than what you´re able to supply? I thought not… they´re a rare species. Have faith, there´s help to get if you activate a network of distributors. One of the most effective tools to get others to provide you with [...]

7 Growth industries characteristics, part 1

You´ve probably heard of them, those successful companies that comes out of nowhere and reach the stars in the wink of an eye. Or the slow but steady ones that step by step grows from a small start-up to a profitable corporation more or less unaffected by seasonal fluctuations or recession times. How do they [...]

Lost in translation ?

Suppose you´re hungry. You stroll down to your favourite restaurant back home in Ohio, Shanghai, Barranquilla or wherever you happens to live. You find a smorgasbord of mouth-watering seafood offered on the menue. One of them is, say, kräftor med vitlökssmör och ostpaj. Would you order it? Didn´t think so. Well, actually it´s a delicacy [...]

Export coaching programme tourism

CBI, Centre for the promotion of imports from developing countries, launches its second export coaching programmme for tourism businesses that wants to expand to Sweden and Europe. Their first programme was a success that resulted in 45 companies closing business deals worth € 8 Million (~US$11,7 Million).
If you are running an incoming tourism business or [...]

Too many chiefs and not enough Indians?

Tourism marketing is a tricky thing. At least in Sweden. Our tourism industry is based on about 7000 small tourism enterprises, still waiting to be discovered by the masses… Most of them are not even small, but micro-companies with one or a just few employees. There are of course a number of larger tourismrelated corporations, [...]

Sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason

Recently the Swedish government presented the budget proposition for next year. VisitSweden got a raise by SEK 10M (~ USD 1,4M) for marketing purposes, which is a drop in the ocean considering that foreign tourists 2007 added a net of SEK 12 BILLIONS (~USD1,7 Bn) to the Swedish economy in VAT only. Talk about “buying [...]