Tourism close to nature and culture in Swiss parks
Content submitted by State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO – Tourism Policy
Submited Date : 25/03/2019
Top left: Disabled trekking in the Aargau Jura Park, ©Urs Dätwiler; bottom left: Parc Ela, ©Parc Ela; top right: PostBus in Biosfera Val Müstair, ©Andrea Badrutt; bottom right: La Route Verte in Parc Jura vaudois, ©Switzerland Tourism, André Meier

The Swiss parks are doing their bit to achieve the SDGs with innovative and sustainable tourism offers focusing on the following activities:

- Developing environmentally friendly tourism offers (SDG 7, 13-15)
- Promoting innovations in tourism in the areas of infrastructure, health-focused, social and accessible offers and educational and awareness-raising offers (SDG 3-4, 9-10)
- Forming partnerships between tourism stakeholders (organisations, service providers, mobility partners) and parks (SDG 17)
- Generating added value for the park regions and creating jobs (SDG 8)

Two best-practice projects:

Schweizer Pärke für alle (Swiss parks for all) – the parks are striving to achieve an inclusive society. They are improving information on the accessibility of tourism offers so that disabled people can also plan their trips to the parks independently. Park management bodies are raising awareness of accessibility among staff and partners and developing accessible tourism offers to enable everyone to discover nature and culture while enjoying a high-quality experience.

Destination Nature – a strong partnership for gentle mobility. All tourism offers in the parks can be reached by public transport but it is not used often enough. In order to boost public transport use, the parks are working with regional railway companies (such as RhB and BLS), PostBus and nature conservation organisations (VCS, BirdLife) to develop and market attractive public transport packages and highlight the benefits of travelling by public transport.

Project manager: Swiss Parks Network