Modern day tourism organisations use standardised tools such as Google Analytics to collect and report website statistics. Yet are the standardised KPIs provided by these tools really able to add value? Where do they come from, how are they collected and why are they important?

The volume of world-wide travel has been rising substantially since the mid-eighties. Despite the many positive socio-economic effects of tourism, the rapid development of tourism also entails a large number of negative environmental and social impacts.

Dear colleagues, If my memory serves me well, it was with this question the challenging speaker and researcher Alf Rehn started his presentation at the ECM meeting in Turku last year. He answered the question with another question: can tourism ever be sustainable?

In trying to measure the volume of meetings in city destinations across Europe and the world, there are several approaches with different methodologies. It’s commonly agreed amongst ECM members that the most commonly utilised data bases and rankings – ICCA and UIA – are of limited value for cities because the definitions and criteria adopted exclude important market segments, corporate meetings being the most obvious.

Best practice example of Paris

Best practice example of Berlin

European Cities Marketing will launch the 7th edition of the European Cities Marketing Benchmarking Report during its Annual Conference in Lyon in June 2011.

According to the 9th European City Tourism Monitor which monitors the expert views of the city tourism professionals, tourist bednights in the 2nd quarter of 2011 is expected to show a year-on increase, as compared to the same period in 2010.