The Industry Outlook: Maintaining the Balance
Summary
This closing industry outlook panel at ITB Berlin 2025 brought together five leaders to discuss how tourism can maintain balance between economic growth and social/environmental responsibility, moderated by Prof. Dr. Harald Pechlaner. The session moved across four interlocking themes: perception crises in US inbound travel, governance versus self-regulation, dispersal to rural and low-season destinations, and measurement reform beyond arrival counts.
Jeff Freeman (President & CEO, US Travel Association) opened with a frank admission that US inbound travel fell in 2024 — down roughly 6% overall, with a 13% drop from Germany specifically. He attributed the German decline largely to widely reported but not-yet-implemented policies around social media data collection at the border. Freeman acknowledged that UK inbound rose ~5% and Mexican inbound rose ~12% in the same period, illustrating how perception impacts vary by market. His core argument was that the private sector must take the lead on correcting misperceptions rather than waiting for government, and that the US industry is investing heavily in ITB to send the message: 'Don't believe everything you read. The US is open for business.'
Sirin Hartman (President, Federal Association of the German Tourism Industry / BDT) argued against relying on rules and regulations to manage overtourism, proposing instead a shared industry intelligence platform where destinations exchange best practices. He noted the new German national tourism strategy — the first coalition agreement to explicitly recognize tourism as an important industry — but cautioned that execution now needs to follow the political goodwill, including on visa policy, labor regulations (specifically the unsuitability of standard 8-hour/5-day shift frameworks for hospitality), and rural infrastructure investment.
Ellen Mardeka (Head of Public Policy DACH & CEE, Airbnb) presented Airbnb data showing that more than 60% of nights booked in Germany in the last year were outside urban areas, and that German rural/smaller-city listings are five times greater than those in Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg combined. She highlighted a 75% surge in Gen Z searches for nature trips. She announced the launch of a 1 million euro rural fund in partnership with the German Tourism Association (DTV), with applications opening in June through September, targeting sustainable and innovative tourism projects in rural communities.
Miro Drašković (Director, Dubrovnik Tourist Board) detailed Dubrovnik's multi-year transformation from being nearly listed as a UNESCO-endangered heritage site due to overtourism to winning the 2026 European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism award. Key interventions included: capping simultaneous cruise arrivals at 5,000 people (working with CLIA), setting a scientifically validated carrying capacity of 11,000 visitors within the old city at any one time, introducing right-of-first-refusal policies for properties within the city walls (buying back former Airbnb units and offering them to local families via long-term leases), implementing participatory budgeting across communities, and opening a new school inside the old city walls to facilitate residential repopulation. The transformation took six to seven years to show measurable results.
Ged Brown (Founder, Low Season Traveler Movement) challenged the entire industry's reliance on arrivals as the primary success metric, invoking Goodhart's Law — 'once a measurement becomes a target, it ceases to become a useful measurement.' He argued that with aviation data from Airbus and Boeing projecting a doubling of commercial fleets in the next 20 years, international arrivals (1.5 billion in 2024) will roughly double, and that deploying existing underutilized off-season infrastructure is more responsible than building new capacity. He framed low-season travelers as the 'antithesis of fair-weather travelers' seeking deeper cultural and heritage connections.
Key Takeaways
- •US inbound travel fell 6% overall in 2024 — the first decline since the pandemic — with German arrivals down 13%, driven largely by perception of social media data collection policies that have not actually been implemented. UK arrivals were up ~5% and Mexican arrivals up ~12% in the same year, illustrating market-specific perception gaps (Jeff Freeman, US Travel Association).
- •Freeman: 'That probably begins with acknowledging we have a problem. And we've got some work to do to still get our government to acknowledge we have a problem.' He positioned ITB attendance as a deliberate private-sector counter-messaging effort independent of government action.
- •Sirin Hartman advocated against codified governance rules for overtourism management, arguing solutions must be destination-specific: 'We shouldn't go for rules and regulations, we should go for best practice' — proposing a shared industry intelligence platform instead of bureaucratic frameworks.
- •Airbnb data for Germany shows more than 60% of all nights booked in the past year were outside urban areas; rural and smaller-city listings outnumber combined Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg listings by a factor of five (Ellen Mardeka, Airbnb DACH & CEE).
- •Among Gen Z users on Airbnb, searches for nature trips rose up to 75% in recent years — the generation is the primary driver of rural and heritage destination discovery (Mardeka).
- •Airbnb and the German Tourism Association (DTV) launched a 1 million euro rural fund at ITB 2025; applications open June through September to fund sustainable and innovative tourism projects in underserved rural communities.
- •Dubrovnik's overtourism controls: cap of 5,000 simultaneous cruise passengers in the old city, a university-validated carrying capacity ceiling of 11,000 total visitors at one time, right-of-first-refusal for all old-city property sales, city budget to buy back former short-term rental properties and lease them to local residents (no subletting permitted), and a new school opened within the city walls (Miro Drašković, Dubrovnik Tourist Board).
Transcript
Now ladies and gentlemen, we are having a panel coming up which is just in the pipelines. U we stick with the topic of balance and for that to steer the conversation I welcome the moderator of the next session. He's professor of tourism at the Catholic University of Aishad English and he's also the scientific director of the competent center for green transformation in tourism. So please shower him with a big round of applause. Professor Dr. Harlana you very much wonderful good afternoon ladies ...
