“The tourist industry is complex. Measures need to be taken develop new and existing destinations for tourists from near and far, as well as establishing a close cooperation between private and public actors, “ wrote minister for enterprise Annie Lööf and the secretary general of the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket), Christina Lugnet in an opinion piece in newspaper Dagens Industri (DI).
40 Swedish locations competed to take part in the scheme, before ultimately five were chosen; namely Bohuslän County, Kiruna in the very north, Vimmerby in Småland, the ski resort Åre in central Sweden and the Stockholm archipelago.
The destinations will share a total of 60 million kronor allocated by the government for this purpose.
A visit to any of these four locations, pilot destinations in the scheme, will be turned into a “top notch overall experience” over a period of five years, according to Lööf and Lugnet.
“The five chosen destinations all have the potential to grow on an international market, while at the same time being very different from each other. They are located in various parts of the country and differ in size,” wrote Lööf and Lugnet.
16.7 million foreign tourists visited Sweden in 2011 and the goal of the tourist industry is to reach a turnover of 500 billion kronor and employ some 300,000 people; twice as many as today, by 2020.
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