Switzerland approved the updated and renewed Tourism Strategy in November 2021. This Strategy draws on the previous tourism strategy and retains a number of objectives:
Improve framework conditions focuses on the co‑ordination of tourism policy. The Swiss Tourism Forum serves as a dialogue and co‑ordination platform contributing to a ‘tourism-friendly’ regulatory environment, focusing on the interface between tourism and spatial planning.
Promote entrepreneurship: aims to contribute to structural change in tourism. Start‑ups are promoted, succession plans are supported, and approaches to strengthen the tourism labour market are developed in co‑operation with industry associations.
Contribute to sustainable development: focuses on adapting tourism to tackle climate change, particularly by better understanding the interface between tourism, landscape and development. Under the “Swisstainable” initiative, the importance of sustainable development for tourism is anchored more broadly.
Maximise the opportunities of digitalisation: focuses on data and statistics as well as the monitoring of digitalisation strategy.
Strengthen the attractiveness of the offer and market presence: focuses on the further development of federal investment promotion and the revitalisation of city and business tourism.
An Advisory Group consisting of tourism stakeholders and entrepreneurs, as well as political representatives, tourism associations, the cantons and the academic community, will oversee the implementation of the national Tourism Strategy.
Switzerland Tourism continues implementing a recovery plan in 2020‑23 (see box below). The Federal Government is providing CHF 70 million for the programme in total (CHF 40 million for 2020‑21 and CHF 30 million for 2022‑23). Half of the funding will be used to provide financial relief to tourism partners. Through the New Regional Policy, Switzerland allowed the cantons to defer repayments under the Investment Assistance Act, which made it possible to support the mountain railway sector in the short term. In addition, funds of CHF 10 million are made available for project promotion via the New Regional Policy for the period 2020‑23.
The promotion of innovative projects in tourism through Innotour is also to be extended for the period 2023‑26. The Federal Government's contribution to such projects will increase from 50% to a new maximum of 70%, reducing the costs for innovation in tourism to be borne by the project promoters. For this, the contribution of the Federal Government to Innotour will be increased by CHF 20 million.
In the coming years, Switzerland’s tourism policy will be increasingly orientated towards the needs of tourism stakeholders, particularly tourism enterprises. Implementation of the strategy will focus on the identified challenges - in particular, the adaptation of tourism to climate change and raising the potential of the interface between tourism, landscape and building culture, and the issue of the tourism labour market. A further focus will be on developing federal investment promotion to modernise and strengthen investment promotion.
Strategic challenges for Swiss tourism in the long term include digitalisation, changing travel behaviour, climate change, below-average productivity and the tourism labour market. Digitalisation can help address the weakness of Swiss tourism (such as the low productivity of many micro-businesses) by increasing efficiency and promoting new forms of co‑operation and co‑ordination.
