Second STAR Cities stakeholders meeting in Hamburg

Second STAR Cities stakeholders meeting in Hamburg

The second stakeholders meeting with 14 participants took place in Hamburg on the 27 May 2019 in the Hamburg Ministry of Economics, Transport and Innovation.

Presentation of the STAR Cities project

Project manager Tanja Blätter presented the STAR Cities Interreg Europe project « Sustainable Tourism for Attractivity of Riverside Cities » briefly and gave an introduction on what is an Interreg Europe Project. The project phases and the role of stakeholders were discussed.

The presentation of the STAR cities Interreg Europe Project ended with the question:

How can we use the benefit of the River Elbe to connect the region with the city of Hamburg and within? What are ideas?

Identification of topics

Five topics have been identified for further cooperation (to be examined if appropriate / suitable in the course of the project) :

1. Digital Card Hamburg Tourism: extension into the (Elbe) region? Esp. the planned «Sustainability-Card» ?
2. Better visitor guidance in order to keep visitors in the region for a longer time (customer retention) ;
3. Survey of existing sustainable touristic companies or offers
4. Better marketing of the region (under the heading «Elbe» ? ) nationwide and/or internationally
5. Mobility / accessibility (e.g. expansion of Hamburg public transport tariff)

Two different ways to understand sustainability were agreed upon :

1. Meaning in terms of « the principle not to consume more as being grown back, generated or henceforward provided ».
2. The temporal dimension of sustainability in term of « a long time lasting effect ».

Hamburg Tourism Agency offered to share the criteria for sustainability of Hamburg Tourismus GmbH (in the next meeting). It was also suggested to integrate sustainability into the regional tourism strategies.

The next steps are : Presentation of regional assessment in Lazio in July. If possible, 2 stakeholders from the Elbe region will attend and next stakeholder meeting in August/September 2019  with presentation of:

• regional assessment of our region (by inspektour GmbH)
• results of meeting Lazio: What can be learned from other STAR City regions?
• further concretisation of goals for HH/Elbe (for action plan)

- Political stakeholders will be included later in the process (when ideas for action plan are more concrete)