The Painful Transition from Destination to Living Space Management

This 40-minute panel at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by Prof. Dr. Harald Pechlaner, confronts the structural shift from visitor-centric destination management to what panelists variously call 'living space management' or 'life-world management.' Four practitioners from Scotland, Finland, Austria, and real estate share front-line experiences of this transition — and consistently frame it as painful, resource-intensive, and politically contested.

Vicki Miller (CEO, Visit Scotland) describes Scotland's approach as anchored in a national well-being economy strategy that explicitly aligns tourism with social and environmental outcomes, not just economic ones. Visit Scotland organizes its work around three pillars — placemaking, place development, and business development — and measures success through a '4S framework': spread of visitors (across the year and country), spend (value over volume), sustainability, and satisfaction. Over 90% of Scottish residents recognize the economic benefits of tourism in terms of jobs, particularly in rural and fragile communities. Edinburgh runs at approximately 95% accommodation occupancy year-round, yet seasonality remains a challenge for the broader country. Scotland has successfully shifted some visitor behavior toward quieter months through targeted marketing with tour operators and travel intermediaries.

Maiju Viiki (Visit Tampere) introduces Tampere's positioning as the 2026 European Capital of Smart Tourism — Finland's eighth consecutive year as the world's happiest country, and Tampere named Finland's most-loved city. Smart tourism in Tampere is defined not primarily by technology but by four pillars: sustainability, accessibility, digitalization, and creativity. A flagship tool is 'Tampere Pulse,' an AI-driven platform that predicts people-flow in the city center one month in advance with approximately 80% accuracy — benefiting both residents and businesses (e.g., coffee shops managing customer flow and reducing food waste). A 2024 resident survey found 80% of Tampere residents feel positive about tourism and about visitor numbers growing — a figure Viiki attributes to overtourism not yet being a serious issue in the city. However, capacity limits are reached during major live events, and Tampere's 70+ public saunas — the most in the world — face high demand from locals, with tourists adding additional pressure.

Manuel Bitschnau (Montafon destination, Vorarlberg, Austria) offers perhaps the most candid account of the 'painful' transition. During COVID, when tourists were barred for a full winter season, some residents told him: 'This is the best time of our lives.' A planned new chairlift that would previously have been celebrated met unexpected public protests: 'Do we need another chairlift? Do we want more tourism?' In response, Montafon founded a dedicated living space management department in 2019 — one of the first DMOs to do so. They surveyed their 17,000 inhabitants and received 4,100 responses, and now maintain 150 ongoing dialogue groups spanning youth, schools, churches, forestry organizations, and hunters. Bitschnau also represents Destination Network Austria (DNA), which ran a two-year 'living space lab' with 11 leading tourism destinations and the Austrian Tourism Ministry, resulting in a published guideline for DMOs on adopting a 'living space perspective.' He warns that the current economic downturn is causing stakeholders to revert pressure back to marketing, reducing funding for these broader management initiatives.

Andreas Schulten (real estate sector, 36 years experience) reframes the discussion through the lens of gentrification and common goods theory. He argues that the same tension haunting tourism — balancing capital value with community value — is a systemic problem across all of society. He poses the contradiction directly: residents want rising property values (their pension, their security), but also resist gentrification. When he asked the audience who wants to 'stick to capital values,' no hands were raised — illustrating the political consensus but also the difficulty of translating sentiment into structural change. His conclusion is that participation structures are the critical mechanism: 'The theory is quite easy. The painful thing is participation.'

The panel converges on several shared conclusions: community sentiment must be measured alongside economic indicators; DMOs cannot manage living space directly but must adopt a living space perspective; dialogue must be ongoing, not one-off; and the transition requires new staffing competencies, sustained funding, and organizational culture change.