The most important industry event in Swiss tourism, the Switzerland Vacation Day, was opened by Doug Lansky with his keynote address titled “Taking Swiss Tourism to the Next Level”. The travel writer and tourism consultant talked about how to shape a guest experience, the tourism products and services that Switzerland still needs to develop and how guests can be motivated to spend more during their stay.

The way this might look was shown in “Turnaround. Swiss Made.” (German), one of the 45 breakout sessions that were offered(German). Pascal Jenny of Arosa Tourism explained in his presentation how value can be added and new guests can be won by morphing from a tourism organisation to an event organisation (Arosa Humorfestival). And Pascal Schär showed how Saas-Fee Tourism pulled off a marketing coup with a crowdfunding campaign.

The Vacation Day in Davos Klosters was rated better than the one the year before. The participants’ satisfaction level was 87%.