Austrian Tourism in 2025: City Tourism is the Growth Engine

The growing demand for city tourism and tourism-extensive rural regions clearly demonstrates that leisure markets are rearranging their priorities towards better quality and more individualised travel experience or – more generally – towards "postmodern" consumption and production structures. "Postmodern" consumers prefer customised products and are interested in commodified experiences. Cities have a relatively highly developed "postmodern" production structure made up of flexible production technologies. The agglomeration advantages enjoyed by cities are the cause of their productivity gains, which in turn generate growth and innovation processes and act as incentives for creative and dynamic individuals. Considering that the trend towards city trips is expected to continue in the long term and urbanisation will spread further, city politicians are thus challenged to adapt the structures of their cities accordingly.