When we speak about 2023, corona is not finished. The war in Ukraine is not finished. Inflation is not finished. More people speak about recession. Faced with all these uncertainties, it’s difficult to have a clear view of what 2023 will bring.
But we want to build our tourism future around three concepts, which we call the triple R: resonance, resilience, and regeneration.
Looking for life-work balance and authenticity
Resonance is one of the main topics that we use in our vision to develop ourselves as an organisation. Together with our partners, it’s important to consider the visiting tourist as a temporary resident.
We try to develop products to give them opportunities to discover the city. We are no longer fixed on numerous products that we can buy, but we really want to target our visitors, our temporary citizens, and really give them what they are looking for.
But what are they looking for? We think people are increasingly looking for a life-work balance--which is not to be confused with work-life balance.
The second thing is, people are looking for real, authentic experiences. More and more people want to see spots that are less touristic, things that are not among the top ten of every online guide, and to live like locals.
We want to give people opportunities to discover things that they did not expect at our destination. We want people to feel the good vibes of the city. It’s more than seeing it, you must feel it, you must live it, you must be part of it. That’s the direction in which we want to go.
Resilience and regeneration
The second R is for resilience. We learned this term two years ago when corona came. We, and other colleagues in other destinations, have thought a lot about this new terminology and what it means for tourism. It means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
I’m not sure that the difficulties are all over now. We try to be prepared, as much as we can, and to be in the spirit of resilience all the time.
The third R stands for regenerative. I think we have to go further than sustainability. Part of sustainability is to be regenerative, and this also applies to the products that we develop.
In the past two years, we have learned that more and more people want to discover nature; they want to walk around. And in our capital city, we are sitting on a treasure of nature--Luxembourg City is full of forests and greenery. There are a lot of projects that we can develop in this vein.
Moreover, one of our very good selling points is that public transport is free in Luxembourg. At first, people don’t believe us. How can it be that public transport is free? But that’s the type of argument that we have to develop in the coming years to be even more competitive when it comes to promoting Luxembourg as a tourism destination.
Agility and flexibility
Luxembourg City is not only a leisure destination, it’s also a destination for business events. In normal times, before corona, a lot of business trips and conferences and huge events took place in Luxembourg City. This sector, which we call the business events industry, is recovering, but very slowly. With our colleagues from the Luxembourg Convention Bureau, we are looking ahead and working to strongly promote Luxembourg as a business events destination.
To succeed, we have to be agile, adapt rapidly and be flexible. We are no longer in the scenario where we can plan a huge conference with 800 participants in 2027, because no one will tell us now what the world will be like in 2027. So we have to think in the short term, but of course, be prepared for the long term. And that’s a completely other mindset than the one we were in two years ago.
Finally, whether it will be leisure tourism or business events, I would like to emphasise that quality takes it all. Coronavirus, the war and inflation have taught us this. We don’t have to think only in quantities or volumes. It’s nice to have volumes and quantities. But above all, we can excel only if we have the best possible quality in our products and services. And that’s also the case for 2023 and 2024 and 2025 and 2026.