The European Travel Commission (ETC) is an international non-profit association representing the national tourism organizations (NTOs) in Europe and is based in Brussels. It was established in 1948 to promote Europe as a tourist destination to long-haul markets outside of Europe; initially the United States, then Canada, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific later on. The ETC in 2023 had 36 member NTOs and 12 associate members from the private industry. The association aims to raise awareness of the importance of tourism among national European authorities and the general public through sharing best practices and cooperation in market intelligence and promotion.
Members ETC membership comprises 36 National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) from 34 European countries, eight of which are from outside the European Union|EU. The ETC member countries are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and Ukraine.
In 2015, the ETC launched an associate membership program extending membership to private organizations and academia; the goal of seeking cooperation and support in strengthening the sustainable development of Europe as a tourist destination. As of 2023, ETC has 12 associate members: Airbnb, Crowd Riff Inc., Emirates/Emirates Group, Eurail Group G.I.E., Expedia Inc., Global Blue S.A., Hi Seas International, Sojern Ltd., World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), Google, The Bicester Collection, and MMGY Global.
History
1948–1952: early years of ETC ETC was established in Stalheim, Norway, during an excursion of the 1948 Congress of the International Union of Official Travel Organizations (IUOTO). ETC became IUOTO's regional commission for Europe in line with the latter's aim “to promote, in a technical and entirely non-political manner, freedom of travel, so as to strengthen peace and mutual understanding between the nations of the world.”Frank Schipper, Igor Tchoukarine and Sune Bechmann Pedersen, European Travel Commission 1948–2018 (Brussels: European Travel Commission, 2018), 18–19.
Committed to the freedom of travel and private enterprise, the ETC did not escape the reality of the early Cold War and cultivated strong ties with the Western camp. The 17 original member countries were recipients of aid from the Marshall Plan, and in July 1948, the ETC formalized its relationship with the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) to supply the OEEC with expert knowledge on tourism matters. Recognizing the importance of tourism for the economic reconstruction of Europe, the OEEC Executive Committee established a Tourism Committee in February 1949.Eric G. E. Zuelow, “The Necessity of Touring Beyond the Nation: An Introduction,” in Touring Beyond the Nation: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History, ed. Eric G. E. Zuelow, 4–5 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).
1950s–1960s: joint publicity campaigns in the United States, facilitating travel Under OEEC oversight, joint publicity campaigns in the US turned into the flagship activity of the ETC. The first campaign took place from August to December 1949.Siegfried Bittel, “10 ans de publicité collective aux États-Unis pour le tourisme européen,” World Travel/Tourisme mondial, no. 40 (February/April 1960): 4. The campaigns promoted Europe as one destination in the American market and encouraged off-season travel.E.g. European Travel Commission, White Paper on a Tourist Policy in Europe (Brussels: Éditions Est-Ouest, 1956). The campaigns were realised by the ETC's New York Committee, which worked closely with marketing firms (e.g. Donald N. Martin & Company, Inc.) and private partners in the transportation, travel, and energy industries.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 32–33. Additionally, the ETC participated in travel fairs, published brochures and calendars of events, produced radio broadcasts, television advertising and short films, along with published advertisements in newspapers and magazines.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 36-37; Bittel, “10 ans de publicité collective aux États-Unis pour le tourisme européen,” 6-9.
In May 1954, an ETC delegation met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Appointment Books, May 1954. The ETC praised Eisenhower for his strong support for international travel by Americans in the interest of rebuilding the European economies.President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Special Message to the Congress on Foreign Economic Policy, 30 March 1954 However, concerns in the American administration over the deficit in the country's balance of payments prompted the Kennedy administration to create the United States Travel Service in June 1961 to motivate foreign nationals to visit the US. At around the same time the reorganization of the OEEC into the OECD ended its involvement in the publicity campaigns, which continued under the aegis of the ETC alone from 1964. ETC continued to defend the freedom to travel when President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1968 State of the Union address asked Americans to reduce non-essential travel.Lyndon B. Johnson, State of the Union address, 17 January 1968. In response the ETC published a Declaration on the Freedom to Travel in February 1968 that identified the freedom to travel as a fundamental human right, to be enjoyed without restriction or discrimination.European Travel Commission, Freedom to Travel: A Declaration Agreed by the Twenty-One National Tourist Organizations which Comprised the European Travel Commission (February 1968).
The ETC also sought to facilitate travel and border crossings by abolishing visa requirements to travel to Europe and between European countries and by alleviating currency regulations, travel taxes, and customs formalities.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 51. By the mid-1950s, North American and Western European tourists could travel through Western Europe without major administrative formalities. Following the 1963 United Nations Conference on International Travel and Tourism, the ETC pushed for discussions on the recommendations of the conference to remove obstacles (visas, customs rules, border-crossing requirements) and streamline tourism regulations, implementing those regulations within the IUOTO and the OECD Tourism Committee.
ETC and Eastern Europe during the Cold War In 1951, ETC welcomed Finland, Spain, and Yugoslavia to its membership.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 34. This decision was undoubtedly related to Cold War imperatives, and in the context of the rift caused by the 1948 Tito–Stalin split, Yugoslavia's membership of ETC was a steppingstone for the country's tourism policy, which aimed to attract more Western tourists. While Yugoslavia was the only socialist country to join the organisation, ETC initially viewed the application for membership from the Soviet Union and Poland after joining IUOTO in 1955 positively for their potential impact on the development of tourism before deciding their membership could be detrimental. Instead IUOTO created a Regional Commission for European Travel composed of national tourism boards from both Western and Eastern Europe while the joint publicity campaigns in the US continued under a separate organization that kept the already well-known name of the “European Travel Commission.”Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 49-50.
1970s–1980s: from Transatlantic to global player In the early 1970s, the ETC obtained a presidency supported by vice presidents and permanent secretariat at the same time Malta (1971) and Cyprus (1973) became member countries. ETC added the preservation of cultural heritage to its mission in collaboration with Europa Nostra, a pan-European federation for cultural heritage.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 63-66. During the 1970s, the ETC capitalized on new technological opportunities from transportation to ICT technologies and facilitated the exchange of information and experiences among its members on these subjects. The creation of Operation Groups in Japan, Argentina, Canada, and Australia in the 1970s, and the ETC's increasing interest in Southeast Asian markets in the 1980s expanded ETC's geographic scope.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 72-73.
The 1970s also signaled the beginning of a long-standing collaboration with the European Economic Community (EEC). In the 1980s, the EEC engaged more directly with tourism and ETC with research initiatives and grant support. The European Parliament identified, for instance, "ETC as best placed for the coordination of overseas promotion of tourism to the EEC."Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 75. In 1981, the ETC also co-founded the European Tourism Action Group, a group of associations advocating for the importance of Europe as a tourist destination.
1990s–2000s: ETC in Europe after the Cold War The Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the transformation of the European Economic Community (EEC) into the European Union in 1993 with the Treaty of Maastricht entailed a significant expansion of ETC's membership starting with Hungary in 1990, and a consolidation of the relationship with European institutions. Throughout the 1990s, the ETC sought to give tourism broader recognition on the EU level. When the Treaty of Lisbon took effect in 2009, tourism was added as a policy domain in which the EU could intervene through article 195 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Meanwhile, ETC continued its research agenda in collaborations with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the European Tourism Association (ETOA). It increasingly paid attention to travel-related computer technologies and online marketing strategies. ETC launched its first website in January 1996, which was fully revamped in 2006 with the help of European Commission funds.Schipper et al., European Travel Commission 1948–2018, 86; Annette Therkelsen and Malene Gram, “Branding Europe – Between Nations, Regions, and Continents,” Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism 10, no.2 (2010): 107-128. The VisitEurope.com website is currently ETC's main platform for the promotion of Destination Europe.
2000s–2020s Between 2015 and May 2023, ETC held the Chairmanship and Secretariat of the European Tourism Manifesto, an alliance supported by over 50 public and private stakeholders from the tourism sector that highlights the key EU policy priorities for the sector on topics ranging from skills and qualifications to sustainability and competitiveness of Europe's tourism.
In 2017, ETC was designated as the official strategic partner of the European Commission for the implementation of the promotional activities in the framework of the 2018 EU-China Tourism Year.
In 2019, ETC launched a new marketing strategy, Horizon 2022, moving from a traditional geographic segmentation to a cross-market thematic promotional approach. Instead of presenting Europe as a sum of destinations, the new strategy promotes the continent as a sum of experiences and interests in multiple destinations around the continent.
Current activities The promotion of Europe as a tourist destination continues to be the ETC's flagship activity. In 2019, ETC launched a new marketing strategy, Horizon 2022, moving from a traditional geographic segmentation to a cross-market thematic promotional approach. Instead of presenting Europe as a sum of destinations, the new strategy promotes the continent as a sum of experiences and interests in multiple destinations around the continent.