Cologne Tourist Board to present expanded city tour program at ITB Berlin

From March 8 to 12, 2017, the Cologne Tourist Board will appear jointly with the neighbouring Rhineside cities Bonn and Düsseldorf at the ITB, the world’s leading travel trade show, in Berlin.

From March 8 to 12, 2017, the Cologne Tourist Board will appear jointly with the neighbouring Rhineside cities Bonn and Düsseldorf at the ITB, the world’s leading travel trade show, in Berlin.

At the event, the Cologne Tourist Board will present Cologne’s broad range of tourist services to international trade visitors and private visitors at Stand 103 in Hall 8.2. Within this framework, the mayors of the three cities will welcome visitors at an official opening at 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 9, 2017, to which media representatives are cordially invited.


The welcoming reception will be followed by a photo opportunity at the stand. Henriette Reker, Mayor of the City of Cologne; Ashok Sridharan, Mayor of the City of Bonn; and Thomas Geisel, Mayor of the City of Düsseldorf, will present new attractions from these three major cities along the Rhine and offer a look ahead at the event calendar for 2017.

Also on Thursday, March 9, 2017, the three cities will stage the RheinNacht in the historic waterworks in the Charlottenburg/Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. This will be a get-together for tour operators, travel journalists and other partners from the tourism sector.

New products, themes and highlights for 2017

The Cologne Tourist Board will add numerous city tours to its programme in 2017. In particular, it has expanded its range of tours conducted in the local dialect, Kölsch. The tours are led by tour guides who have received a diploma in Kölsch from the Akademie för uns kölsche Sproch, which is supported by the cultural foundation SK-Stiftung Kultur. Two exclusive projects will be conducted in cooperation with WDR Mediagroup and Space.Time.Concepts GmbH will also be launched in the spring of 2017. Starting in April, children will be able to discover Cologne with support from the popular children’s TV programme “Die Sendung mit der Maus” (The Mouse). Tours of the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) offer fascinating insights into the world of space travel. As part of its central theme #urbanCGN – cologne urban lifestyle, the Cologne Tourist Board cooperates with art.rmx e.V., the organizer of the CityLeaks festival, to offer a monthly urban art tour through selected Cologne neighborhoods.

Through its #urbanCGN theme, the Cologne Tourist Board is keeping pace with the trend toward individualizing the travel experience. It directly addresses its target group via the blog and through social media. It is also planning various additional projects for 2017 in cooperation with partners including le bloc and c/o pop.

The highlight for sports fans in 2017 will be the 81st IIHF Ice Hockey World Cup in Cologne and Paris from May 5 to 21.

2017 will be a strong trade fair and conference year for Cologne. In addition, visitors who are interested in art and culture in particular can look forward to many other events and exhibitions, including supporting programs. Right in time for the computer games trade fair gamescom in August, the Museum of Applied Arts will open the exhibition “Crazy about playing games: Of dragon slayers, queens and pixel monsters.” In autumn, the Wallraf Richartz Museum will honour the brilliant painter Jacopo Tintoretto with a major special exhibition, “Tintoretto – A star was born”, which celebrates the 500th anniversary of the artist’s birth. The exhibition “James Rosenquist. Painting as immersion” at the Museum Ludwig will pay well-deserved tribute to one of the most significant representatives of Pop Art in the USA and worldwide.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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