Improve framework conditions

A good operating framework is one of the keys to competitive tourism businesses and an attractive tourist destination. The Federal Government’s Tourism Strategy attaches high priority to improving framework conditions for and in Switzerland. Improving framework conditions consists primarily of implementing strategic issue and stakeholder management, laying down a knowledge base in combination with proactive communication appropriate to its target groups, coordinating tourism policy matters, cooperating with relevant actors, and helping to achieve a tourism-friendly regulatory environment. In order to improve the framework conditions for Switzerland as a tourist destination, a focus will be placed on the following activities in the forthcoming years:

Action Item 1: Improve knowledge transfer and connection via the Tourism Forum Switzerland (TFS)

In the coming years, the further development of the TFS is to be continued. To this end, communication and interaction with the relevant actors as well as networking between the relevant actors are to be expanded. Furthermore, the involvement of tourism businesses is to be strengthened and the exchange with the federal offices relevant for the federal tourism policy is to be intensified.

Action Item 2: Help to achieve a tourism-friendly regulatory environment

SECO has collaborated closely with the federal agencies that make up DETEC to produce an initial set of principle governing interaction between tourism and planning regulations. In the coming years, the recommendations of this work at the interface between tourism and planning regulations will be addressed. In addition, the measures decided by the Federal Council in May 2021 with the report on the effects of the impact analysis of the Second Homes Act are to be implemented.

Action Item 3: Make international cooperation more systematic and collaborate more closely on individual projects

The Cooperation with the Tourism Committee of the OECD and with the UNWTO is to be systematised and intensified on a project basis in the future. The aim is to coordinate the interests that make up Swiss tourism policy and give them a greater voice in the international arena. The UNWTO’s Programme and Budget Committee is an ideal platform for this. Switzerland will assume the Chair from autumn 2021 to autumn 2023. Meanwhile the knowledge acquired at international level should be incorporated systematically in the information and decision-making basis on which the Federal Government’s Tourism Strategy rests.