Updating the tourism strategy for the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen with a particular focus on sustainability has been declared a target in the coalition agreement of the 2023-2027 election period of the State Parliament of Bremen. The tourism strategy issued in 2018 expired at the end of 2025 and has been updated in a participatory process over the course of the last year. On January 1^st 2026, the so-called “Tourismusstrategie Bremen 2030+” published by the Bremen Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ports and Transformation came into effect.

Over the past six years a vast share of the measures defined in the Bremen 2025 tourism strategy had already been implemented. In order to ensure that Bremen Tourism remains competitive, innovative and well positioned in the years to come, cross-cutting issues such as sustainability (economic, environmental and social) and digitalization were now given greater consideration as part of the updated tourism strategy.

The updated strategy is based on seven fields of action that address both ongoing as well as new topics through defined lead-projects and measures. One field of action centres around sustainability and resilience and specifically addresses sustainability communication, sustainability capacity building for stakeholders, climate protection and sustainability monitoring and management. 

The updated tourism strategy was developed in a highly participatory manner with various rounds of consultation from destination stakeholders. This helped to ensure that the identified measures are feasible, realistic and tailored to the destination context. Together with cultural institutions, associations, hotels and restaurants, retailers, city district initiatives and many service providers from the tourism sector, the steps for achieving the planned goals were discussed across departments and project ideas were collected. Tools like the Bremen Tourism B2B newsletter or the LinkedIn channel were used to invite stakeholders to contribute their wishes and expectations to the process.

As part of the measures implemented from the previous strategy Bremen Tourism now organizes stakeholder exchange events (on MICE, arts and culture, cultural heritage, sustainability and general tourism development) on a regular basis that will continue to serve as platform to steer the implementation of the new strategy.

The five thematic clusters that shape the destination image of Bremen and which are outlined in the strategy focus on culinary tourism, arts and culture, cultural heritage, science and blue and green areas in Bremen. Each thematic cluster is linked to cross-cutting themes such as sustainability or digitalisation and AI. Both topics are continuously addressed within the framework of working groups, projects and measures.

The roll-put phase and implementation of the updated strategy is envisioned for 2026 and the following years. A monitoring and reporting system will be set up during the first year to track the progress with implementation as well as to visualise and communicate the process to tourism stakeholders.