Annual Report 2020

Zur Startseite Uni Bern Portal Zur Startseite Uni Bern Portal
Lake Lauenen instead of Lucerne
Monika Bandi Tanner

“In recent years, nearly everybody has been able to travel and trips were available in any price category.”

POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION

How COVID-19 is changing tourism

Monika Bandi Tanner from the Tourism Research Unit of the University of Bern quickly put together a free e-learning course during the lockdown entitled “The Fascinating World of Tourism”, which is aimed at anybody employed in the Swiss tourism industry. She also analyzed how the coronavirus crisis has changed tourism.

 

In just three weeks, Hansruedi Müller, formerly a professor of tourism, and Monika Bandi Tanner, co-head of the Tourism Research Unit, prepared 15 training modules on topics such as opportunities and risks, promoting quality and sustainability as well as trends in tourism, to create the new e-learning offer entitled “The Fascinating World of Tourism”. They originally got the idea from Flurin Riedi, the Director of Tourism in Gstaad, who had contacted the Tourism Research Unit to ask whether they had any digital training courses on offer for his employees during the lockdown.

“Once Gstaad had successfully tested the program, they came up with the idea of offering free access to the course to anybody working in the Swiss tourism industry,” said Monika Bandi Tanner. To make it happen, Bandi and Müller collaborated with the Höheren Fachschule für Tourismus IST (Technical College of Tourism). In the end, more than 500 people from a total of 200 organizations signed up – including the entire staff of Basel Tourismus. “The e-learning program was intended as a way of helping the tourism industry overcome the coronavirus crisis. It’s suitable for many different subsections of the tourism industry and very practice-oriented,” explains Bandi Tanner.

Swiss tourism has changed

The people of Switzerland traveled differently in 2020. They mainly stayed in Switzerland and took day trips. “They also visited locations that had previously lived a wallflower existence,” she says. Instead of Interlaken or Lucerne, they were suddenly flocking to the Binn Valley and Lake Lauenen. “That’s interesting because tourism in the cities has developed very positively over the past eight to ten years, even despite the strong Swiss franc. In regions like in the Alps where tourism is actually a leading industry, on the other hand, business has stagnated,” she explains. The system self-corrected somewhat, at least for a short while.

Did you know...?

"The Research Institute for Leisure and Tourism FIF (the predecessor of the Tourism and Research Unit) was originally founded in 1941, during the Second World War, through a resolution of the Canton of Bern with the goal of leveraging expertise and research to support the reeling Swiss tourism industry."

More sustainable travel?

“The coronavirus crisis certainly also opens up a chance for more conscious travel,” says Bandi Tanner. Until now, it’s been easy for individual tourists to ignore the negative impact of their own travel behavior. If something like the carbon emissions generated through tourism contribute to global warming and are also one factor behind the lack of snow in winter sports resorts, then the operators of tourist destinations mitigate that effect by making artificial snow. “Now, however, the health threat is making travel more burdensome and even riskier, meaning that the negative repercussions of our travel are suddenly having a personal impact on us,” the tourism expert says. As a result, we’ll think more consciously about when we’re willing to accept those risks or even a quarantine. “In the end, though, I presume that a large part of the population will revert to old habits once the pandemic’s over – they’ll still get the travel bug,” explains Bandi Tanner.

Travel expected to become more exclusive again

When it comes to the tourism game, the deck will probably reshuffled over the next two to three years. “In recent years, nearly everybody has been able to travel and trips were available in any price category,” says Bandi Tanner. She explains that “Safety precautions will result in higher costs since hotel chains and airlines rely highly frequency-based business models with high fixed costs.” That means travel could become more exclusive again.

TOURISM RESEARCH UNIT

The Tourism Research Unit is integrated into the Center for Regional Economic Development (CRED) and is responsible for tourism research and teaching. In its capacity as an interdisciplinary research unit, it addresses tourism-related issues from a broad economic perspective and incorporates other relevant aspects and disciplines. It is also considered to be a point of contact for matters related to tourism and regional economic development as well as for applied research and services.

Content