In December 2019, the Danish government announced the development of a national strategy for sustainable growth in Danish tourism. The Danish National Tourism Forum will draft the new national strategy working in close collaboration with the tourism industry and relevant stakeholders. As part of the work, the Danish National Tourism Forum will, among other duties, focus on opportunities and challenges for the Danish tourism industry as result of the need for a more sustainable tourism sector, digitalisation and increased international competition. The National Tourism Forum will also suggest guidelines for sustainable growth in Danish tourism that balances environmental, economic and social sustainability, thus contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Likewise, the Danish National Tourism Forum will suggest initiatives to strengthen Danish tourism.
The existing National Tourism Strategy (2016) has been the framework guiding the industry’s development since 2016. Starting from the common vision of being an engaging tourism destinations and creating a variety of quality experiences, the strategy sets out ten policy priorities:
The tourism industry should have a robust framework to enable continued growth.
Efforts made to promote tourism should be effective and the use of public funds in marketing activity should add value.
Denmark should be marketed in a co-ordinated manner with an emphasis on digital channels.
Strong destinations should drive growth in tourism.
Tourists should enjoy high quality experiences in Denmark.
The digitalisation of Danish tourism should be strengthened.
It should be easy for tourists to get to and to get around Denmark.
The tourist industry should be competent and innovative.
The development of Danish tourism should be evidence-based.
All of Denmark should welcome tourists.
The Strategy sets out three goals to 2025:
Grow visitation by a third, equivalent to 17 million more bed-nights compared with 2015: progress is on track, with 2018 bed-nights (0.6 million ahead of target).
Grow tourism spending to DKK 140 billion, equivalent to an additional DKK 45 billion compared to 2014: progress on track, with 2017 tourism spending of DKK 128 billion ahead of target.
Visitor satisfaction scores in line with Northern European average: on target.
In 2019, the Danish Board for Local Business Promotion launched two new funds to: i) support local efforts to develop strong and attractive destinations, high-quality tourist experiences and effective international marketing; and ii) support the consolidation of existing tourist information organisations into stronger destination management organisations. With a total budget of DKK 50 million, destination management organisations can apply for the destination development fund, while public entities, enterprises and local organisations can apply for the broader cross-geographical tourism development fund.
In 2017, VisitDenmark launched the first national data strategy for Danish tourism. A core element of this strategy is the TourismTech Data Lake project, to collect data from tourism stakeholders, develop new tourism business models, and create insights into what attracts international tourists to Denmark. In 2019, a pilot project was launched together with private partners to develop a travel prediction model by testing hypotheses about why tourists visit Denmark. In the first stage, hypotheses are tested in each partners own data-pool. At a later stage, a data lake may also be developed.
