SECO, InnoTour

Alena Kochurova, Simone Dimitriou,

Lynn Huber, Jeannine Müller, Charlotte Andrey

History & DevelopmentThe abbreviation SECO stands for State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. It was created as an interface between politician, entreprises and social partnership. It helps ensure a sustainable economical growth.Innotour is a project generated by SECO, which started in 1997. The aim of Innotour is to stimulate innovation, cooperation and profesionalism in Swiss Tourism. It tends to reduce burocraty and offers financalassistment to privates (PPP!).

GoalsSECO focuses its measures on: 1. Strengthening economic and financial

policy, 2. Developing urban infrastructure and

utilities, 3. Supporting the private sector and the

entrepreneurship, 4. Promoting sustainable trade, 5. Stimulating climate-friendly growth

General informations about SECO (Innotour)It is directed by Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch The headquarter is situated in Bern.

Budget of Innotour: 20 moi Francs for 2012-2015, given by the Government.

No turnover is generated by Innotour, at it is a help for innovation in tourism.

Innotour: Organisation & Structure

Challenges faced by InnotourInnotour has supported the following activities, which are part of the challenges faced now by the tourism industry:

Investment for improvment of the swiss international benchmarking (data sharing)

Investment for protection of the climate (global warming)

Investment to help developping summer activities (fight against the seasonality)

Linked/associated withDirectly linked with SECO, which is Switzerland overall economical control.And they had of course many associations with the different privates they did help.

Importance and impact on the swiss tourism sectorInnotour has a direct impact on the devlopment of tourism, as it finances private organization’s projects.It is a link between Public (government) and Private (organization), as in PPP. The privates find help to co-finance their projects.

Personnal opinionWe constate that SECO offers many opportunities for development and innovation in the swiss tourism sectors. It supports many privates with their ideas/projects, therefore it helps the swiss tourism to propose a more diversified offer.Swiss tourism may need not only diversification, but also innovation to attract tourists during the off-season (summer). SECO, particulary Innotour works on these objectives, as well as on the managment of climate changes and the difficult benchmarking in tourism sector.