©️ Sandesh Athreya B D on Unsplash
Strategic Foresight: Future-Proof Destination Management
What might tourism in Germany look like in the future? Which influences and trends will shape the tourism landscape going forward, and how can German destinations prepare for them today?
Destinations addressing these key questions have a significant advantage in ensuring that they stay relevant in the future – for visitors, residents, and future generations alike. Futures Thinking and Strategic Foresight help destinations understand emerging trends, opportunities, and risks, and make well-informed decisions about destination development.
The core objective of our collaboration with dwif Tourism Consulting is to embed futures thinking and strategic foresight into destination management, making the future a central dimension of tourism development and empowering DMOs to plan, decide, and act with a view to what lies ahead.
Our Approach: Shaping the Future Together
The concept is based on close collaboration between decision-makers and tourism stakeholders, integrating diverse perspectives on a destination’s development potentials into a specially designed strategic foresight process.
The goal is to collaboratively develop long-term strategies and visions of desirable futures, working in a practice-driven, participatory, and goal-oriented way that enables participants to independently and confidently exercise strategic foresight beyond our involvement. This approach:
- helps identify and evaluate trends and signals of emerging change at an early stage
- encourages organizations and stakeholders to actively engage with different future scenarios
- opens new perspectives and practical pathways for informed decision-making and future development
- creates a shared understanding of critical uncertainties, helping to pinpoint where innovation will have the greatest impact
Our Partner: dwif Tourism Consulting
To implement this concept, we collaborate closely with dwif Tourism Consulting, a leading consulting company in Germany, supporting local destinations, tourism organizations, and actors in the leisure industry. dwif stands for pioneering, data-driven, and practice-oriented strategies and brings many years of experience from projects in the German tourism landscape.
Together, we have already carried out the “Foresight and Innovation Project for Berlin’s Visitor Economy,” commissioned by visitBerlin. Between October 2024 and December 2025, the project brought together more than 150 stakeholders from Berlin’s tourism and events industry to engage in dialogue about possible and desirable tourism futures.
Our Goal: A Practice-driven, Participatory Foresight Process
Our approach is deliberately designed to strengthen the future readiness of German tourism destinations and make opportunities for action visible and usable. We place particular emphasis on the development of competencies and structures that enable destinations to proactively shape their own future and successfully prepare for emerging opportunities and challenges.
Futures Literacy: Strengthening the ability to think in multiple future pathways and desirable development opportunities
Foresight Methods: Building structures that enable participants to exercise strategic foresight and identify relevant trends independently
Future Narratives: Shaping a shared vision and sense of direction for the destination and its stakeholders
Implementation Focus: Translating bold future visions into concrete actions and practical steps that can be taken today
©️ Julia Taubitz on Unsplash
Our Process: Strategic Foresight in Three Phases
Across three consecutive phases, we identify and evaluate concrete indicators of change and opportunities for destination development. This approach provides orientation in dealing with potential futures and offers structured insights into working futures thinking and strategic foresight.
Phase 1: Trend and environmental analysis
Phase 2: Scenario development
Phase 3: Process implementation
Our Tool: Trend Management with the 4strat Trendradar
The 4strat Trendradar supports this process as a central knowledge platform, consolidating all relevant insights from the trend and environmental analyses and the scenario development process. Upon completion of the project, the tool is handed over to the DMO as a curated resource, providing a foundation for independent strategic foresight work and enabling long-term monitoring of relevant trends and key influencing factors.
Would you like to explore new paths in destination management together with us and our expert partner dwif Tourism Consulting? Contact our tourism expert, Dr Birthe Menke, and begin your transformation toward a future-proof DMO!
