During my stay in Aachen, I was introduced to the different departments of the tourist office. I got the chance to attend several meetings, including an introductory meeting with Mrs Katrin Hissel, director of Aachen Tourist Service.

 

I was also allowed to attend the monthly meeting with all department heads where numbers and statistics were discussed. Here are some of the things I learned.

 

What is Aachen Tourist Service (ATS)?
ATS is the organisation that helps the city of Aachen to inform potential tourists and tries to attract them to come and visit the town. It is an independent organisation that does not belong to the city council. The employees are not civil servants.

 

Some interesting facts & figures on tourism in Aachen.
• About 250.000 people live in Aachen
• 160 000 tourists visited the tourist information point at Elisenbrunnen in 2018
• 70 % MICE tourists versus 30% leisure tourists

 

How many people work at ATS?
About 20 people including 4 students that are in a system of dual-learning (partly attending school, partly working).

Who are the target groups or clients of ATS?
- Tourists
- Local commerce (shops, restaurants, hotels)
- Politics (council)  

Contrary to what one may think, the tourism service does not only have to think about the service it should provide to tourists. It also provides a service to the local commerce for whom they, indirectly, work by putting Aachen in the spotlights with potential visitors. Since a lot of money comes from the council, it is important that their wishes are taken into account too. Not an easy balance to find on an tight budget.

 

Where does ATS get resources (income) from?
- Subsidized by the city council;
- Commission for booking of hotel rooms, guide tours, etc.
- Profit on sale of souvenirs at tourist information point
- Tuition from members (hotels, restaurants, etc.)

 

Difficulties the Aachen Tourist Service is facing.

• Funding from the town council does not cover the cost of running ATS. Additional resources come from bookings for tour guides and hotels. The competition of booking.com however proves to be a real challenge. Tourists do not have the habit of booking through a tourist office website. Even the hotels themselves, who usually have a booking tool on their site, complain about this. Only 2% of hotel  booking are generated through the own hotel websites.
• Other resources come from a tuition by local hotels and restaurants. Since Aachen is doing well and restaurants often are full, it is hard to convince them to pay the fee. They have a feeling they don’t need ATS because all is going well for them. It is hard to measure the impact of the Aachen Tourist Service Centre’s activities on the tourism industry in town.

The different departments where I was allowed to watch & learn were:
1. The Service Centre/Aachen Convention
2. The Tourist Info
3. Marketing & Communication

What are the tasks of the different departments at ATS?

The Service Centre takes care of all the contacts with the tourists. The most obvious and visible part to the public is The Tourist Info. It is located at the Elisenbrunnen, a popular place for tourists in the heart of the town. The famous cathedral (Aachener Dom) and townhall (Rathaus) are nearby.  Here information is given, city maps and brochures being distributed and souvenirs are being sold.

Behind the scenes, in the back office at Markt 52, there is a whole team dealing with tourists through the internet and phone. There is a hotline on which the Tourist Info can be reached by phone every day from 09.00 till 18.00. A lot of questions that come in via the website need to be answered by e-mail. Booking hotels and tour guides or packages for both individuals and groups takes up a big part of their time. Staff also need to deal with the enquiries that come in through TOMAS, the booking tool for hotel rooms and guided tours. In an other department some one takes care of social media and a team is responsible for the maintenance of the website.

What did I learn?
It was very interesting to see how a tourist service is run in a very efficient and modern way. It gave me the opportunity to learn how things are dealt with in 2019. My own work experience in the tourism industry dates back from 20 years ago. A lot has changed since. In the nineties there was hardly internet and bookings were made by phone or fax. There was no e-mail nor websites and certainly no social media. This is the main reason why I was so interested in doing this job shadowing experience. I wanted to know how the tourism industry is handling all these challenges.
 
Practical ICT tools:
• Group booking tool. Price offers from hotels are collected and put automatically in an offer that can be sent to the client. It also includes a follow up system for this offers/group bookings.

• Professional use of Outlook Mail Programme with several inboxes and a system where jobs & activities can be shared by all staff members

• Phrase Express is an tool you can add to your mail programme. It is used to insert various pieces of text one regularly uses in mails. It is a tremendous time saving tool.

• Google Analytics is a tool which is being used to measure how users interact with the website content, in this case: https://www.aachen-tourismus.de/nl/ 
Aachen Tourists Service can monitor how many clicks their website generated, how long a visitor stayed on the site, where the visitor lives, which information was viewed, etc.

• Content Management System or CMS can be used to link the content of your website to the query of the client (the more phrases or key words that are linked, the more change the clients finds you website).

• Facebook business account: FB@Aachen Tourismus. Facebook offers good and clear possibilities to analyse statistics but unfortunately one can not export them, only look at them.

To conclude…
Now that I have seen how the challenges of modern living are dealt with at a tourist service centre, it makes me feel more confident when I am in the classroom. I feel like I am up-to-date again and know what I am talking about. This is really necessary when teaching a subject like tourism. My pupils have changed over the years. They live in a world that keeps on changing faster and faster and social media is their world. Thank you Erasmus+ for this wonderful opportunity!