German Youth Travel Award: Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania on the Fast Lane in Youth Tourism

Tourism students from Cologne Business School (CBS) and an international jury award prizes to the German Federal States with the best profiles in the field of Youth Tourism at the Youth-Incoming-Germany (YIG) Workshop

Once again the ITB Berlin 2007 presented a Youth-Incoming-Germany (YIG) Workshop under the title “German-Boulevard for Youth Travel”. Companies offering youth accommodation, Incoming-Enterprises specialising in travel for children and young people, companies offering language-learning trips, as well as organisations operating in the field of international exchanges for children and young people, presented themselves on this special platform at the ITB Berlin.

Students from Cologne Business School (CBS) assessed for the ITB Berlin, in an open
competition, what each of the German Federal States has to offer in the market segment of Youth and Student Travel. The students’ suggestions were then evaluated by an
independent, international jury.

The jury followed the students’ suggestion to award Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania with the prize for first place. Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania, which ranked third place in the YIG-Workshop’s first year (2005), has continually improved itself since then. In winning this award, Bernd Fischer, Head of the Tourism Association, and Reinhard Schwarz, Junges Land für Junge Leute, reaped the benefits of their hard, conceptual work and of their leading role in introducing quality regulations for children’s and young people’s accommodation. The
Quality-Management Model should be introduced across the nation in the near future, by the Federal Forum for Children’s and Young People’s Travel, with the support of the Federal Ministry for Commerce. In addition to the certificate and trophy, winner Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania received one year’s trial membership of the World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation (WYSETravel Confederation) as well as a complimentary stand at the world’s largest trade event in tourism, the WYSTC Convention in Istanbul.

Second place was awarded to the Tourismus-Agentur Schleswig-Holstein, partner state of this year’s YIG-Project. The “state with the two oceans”, last year’s winner, convinced the jury of its merit with the diversity of its offerings, its youth-orientated marketing and its
collaborations at home and abroad (e.g. Baltic Youth). The jury warned that the strategic
direction adopted by principle players in tourism in Schleswig-Hostein, i.e. moving away from tourism for children and young people and towards Best-Ager-Tourism, should be changed and that the focus should be more on the potential of the Youth Travel segment of the market. According to Susan Goldstein, Representative of the WYSTC and the WYSE Travel Confederation, young travellers aged 16-24 are at present the travel industry’s fastest growing sector, representing over 20 per cent of all international visitors. The second prize was donated by the ITB Berlin and included the complimentary allocation of a YIG-Service- and Exhibitor’s-presence to a company from Schleswig-Holstein (to be chosen by the
Tourismus-Agentur Schleswig-Holstein) in 2008.

Thüringer Tourismus GmbH won the prize for third place based on their successful marketing of the state’s culture, the ThüringenCard, as well as the diversity of their offerings and the commendable infrastructure in Thuringia. For their prize, Das Reisenetz e.V. has
arranged that two representatives from a company specialising in youth tourism in Thuringia may take part in the forthcoming meeting of Trade Association for Children’s and Young People’s Travel, due to take place in Autumn 2007.

The German Youth Travel Award’s international jury was created in 2005 and is made up of the representatives of the ITB Berlin, Manager of ITB Berlin David Ruetz and Product Manager Friederike Hansen; Mathias Knospe, Deutsche Zentrale für Tourismus (DZT); Susan Goldstein (Director General of the World Youth and Student Travel Conference and also Board Member of the WYSE Travel Confederation) as well as Dr. Heike Bähre (iNTEGRON-Institut, Manager of the YIG Project Office). In addition to these, representatives of the Hochschule Bremen, Prof. Dr. Helga Freericks and Prof. Dr. Felix Bernhard Herle; Prof. Dr. Jörg Soller (Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft Berlin); Ludwig Ottenbreit (Branch Manager of “Das Reisenetz e.V.”); and Dipl.-Geogr. Martina Leicher (Cologne Business School, CBS-Head of the Department of Tourism) were also jury members.

The allocation of prizes was based on a catalogue of statistical and factual criteria (e.g. the
economic significance of youth tourism, accommodation, tourist attractions), offers (product and price e.g. the quality and diversity of the offer, opportunities for international and intercultural encounters), Marketing and Cooperation (e.g. collaboration with private vendors, internet presence and booking ability), Merchandising/Advertising/PR (e.g. Marketing,
information flyers and competitions aimed at the specific target group) and, for example, exceptional products, Best-Practice cases or cooperation with other policy departments.