Welcome to the NIT! For 30 years the NIT has been researching issues from tourism and related topics. On the basis of our research, we also develop tourism strategies within consultancy projects. On these pages you will find information about the Institute and our work. Please contact us for further information.
New Insights for Tourism.
Selected Projects
“Tackling Climate Change” – Project wins 2nd prize at the German Tourism Award 2022
The 2nd prize of the jury of the German Tourism Association (DTV) goes this year to TourismusMarketing Niedersachsen GmbH. "The adaptation strategies for tourism in Lower Saxony are a trend-setting initiative of a state tourism organisation that takes a structured look at the consequences of climate change on tourism and sensitises and supports travel regions and service providers with a remarkable range of tools," said Norbert Kunz. "An important process has been initiated here, because the question has long been not whether climate change will affect German tourism in particular, but how and where."
In addition to preparatory online workshops, four regional conferences have been held in the near past, at which the respective local actors were able to present topic-related practical examples. Now the final conference will take place at the beginning of July. […] Read more
Wadden Sea Tourism Radar
Together with the WWF, the NIT has developed the "Wadden Sea Tourism Radar" as a component of the Interreg project PROWAD LINK: a guideline that supports locations in making tourism development in the Wadden Sea World Heritage Site sustainable and nature-compatible and in identifying undesirable developments at an early stage. […] Read more
AIR – AI-based recommender for sustainable tourism development
The development of processes based on artificial intelligence is intended to equalize and manage visitor flows in the future. This will provide sustainable tourism with a further opportunity to identify any clusters of visitors that may arise and the resulting congestion of popular travel and excursion destinations at an early stage. Using the information, visitors […] Read more
Smart Destination in NRW’s major protected areas (Großschutzgebiete)
For both tourism providers and visitors, the coordinated guidance of visitor flows has advantages – and is an essential factor in reconciling tourism and nature conservation. Tourismus NRW has therefore commissioned the NIT to examine what possibilities there might be for new types of environmentally sensitive guidance systems in the Eifel National Park region and […] Read more
OSTSEE2100
The Ministry of Economics, Transport, Labour, Technology and Tourism of Schleswig-Holstein has commissioned a systematic inventory analysis of the public tourism infrastructure on the Baltic Sea coast and its resilience to exceptional weather conditions, especially storm surges and the predicted sea level rise. Initially, three municipalities are to be examined in depth. […] Read more
Added value tourism Oberstaufen
Tourism is the leading economy of Oberstaufen in the Allgäu. It brings a range of added values to the town for its inhabitants, the regional economy and the municipality of Markt Oberstaufen. However, like many other destinations, Oberstaufen must manage to secure and promote the success, but also the acceptance of tourism and the support for its further development against the background of diverse challenges. […] Read more
News
NECSTouR Conference in Barcelona
On 23 September 2022, at the NECSTouR General Assembly Meeting in Barcelona, Ulf Sonntag moderated the panel at the conference on “Regenerative Tourism contributing to the wellbeing of the community”.
PROWAD LINK at the World Heritage Forum
On June 16, 2022, Henrike Beer presented the results of the PROWAD LINK guest survey at the World Heritage Forum in Wilhelmshaven.
ITB-Kongress 2022
On the occasion of the ITB Berlin Convention 2022, on March 8, Martin Lohmann will give a presentation on "Tourism Demand after Crises: Lessons Learned from World´s Crises from Cernobyl to COVID-19". […] Read more
First results of Reiseanalyse 2022
As every year, the Forschungsgemeinschaft Urlaub und Reisen e. V. (FUR) publishes its latest Reiseanalyse results. On 7 March 2022, Martin Lohmann presented the latest developments in the German holiday travel market. Following the presentation, the participants had the opportunity to address their questions to the Reiseanalyse team. As a long-standing partner of the FUR, […] Read more
Ulf Sonntag new Managing Director at NIT
Ulf Sonntag is the new Managing Director of the NIT in Kiel, Institute for Tourism Research in Northern Europe. As of 1 January, he takes over the helm from Martin Lohmann, who has managed the NIT's fortunes since 1991. Ulf Sonntag has worked at the NIT for 20 years, most recently as head of market research and authorised signatory. Martin Lohmann will continue as the scientific head of the NIT until the end of June 2022. […] Read more
CAST – Data for Tourism Roundtable
With his participation in the Roundtable on Data & Data Analytics of the CAST Network on June 8, 2021, Ulf Sonntag was able to share his contribution “Data needs of tourism destinations from a personal user’s point of view – Big Data Enabling Tourism Competitiveness” with other experts. CAST (Creative Accelerators for Sustainable Tourism) is […] Read more
Webinar Business Finland: Outlook on tourism industry in Germany
Ulf Sonntag was featured in the May 5, 2021 webinar “Outlook on tourism industry in Germany” with his contribution on the topic “Holidays in Corona times: How the Germans would like to travel in 2021 und what they think about Finland”.
BBC World News Interview
Ulf Sonntag was interviewed on May 3, 2021 in a television report by BBC World News. The topic of the interview with David Eades was the EU Commission’s intended relaxation of existing restrictions on travel from third countries and the resulting prospects for the travel industry.
EU-Presidency: Ulf Sonntag speaks about “Big data enabling tourism competitiveness”
On 8 March, Ulf Sonntag presented on “Data needs of tourism destinations” at the event “Big Data enabling tourism competitiveness”, organised by Visit Portugal as part of Portugal’s 2021 EU Presidency.
Climate change and tourism
Germanys international broadcast Deutsche Welle recently featured an interview with Wolfgang Günther on climate change and tourism.