Berlin’s Culture Project: plans for recovery after a year in lockdown

Berlin is arguably one of the cultural powerhouses of the world. With the global cultural sector devastated after a year of lockdown, we reached out to Burkhard Kieker, CEO of Visit Berlin, to discover what the city’s plans were for recovery, and how they have reframed their approach from ‘attracting tourists’ to ‘having guests’.


What has been your biggest learning as a CEO for a city  marketing organisation over the past year?


The biggest learning was something we were already aware of before, which is that there’s a very close relationship between tourism and culture – you can’t divide it by any means. We’re dependent on each other and so with the close of tourism in Berlin, there was also a complete shutdown of culture. One of the very few positive aspects of the whole development is that culture became aware of how dependent they were on visitors in our city. Berlin is such a cultural hub – we have 178 museums, 7 symphony orchestras, a crazy three opera houses … Even if Berliners were to go out every night, we still couldn’t fill it. So, I think there’s a much more positive awareness for guests who are visiting out city.

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The Place Brand Portfolio is City Nation Place's searchable portfolio of Awards case studies from the past five years.


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