Five Swedish cities get 'neighbourly' for the summer

The initiative seeks to promote regional and domestic tourism

Five Swedish cities have joined forces in promoting each other’s attractions as a way to stimulate intra-regional tourist flow during the summer period. The initiative is called ’48 Hours with the Neighbour’ (#48timmarhosgrannen) and is a re-hash of last year’s successful ’24 Hours with the Neighbour’.

This time around, the idea is to promote spending more time (say a whole weekend) and sleeping over in a nearby county in order to get the chance to better explore what might be on offer there. The participating cities are: Norrköping, Karlstad, Örebro, Västerås and Linköping. The way they are neighbours is that they are all the capitals of five Swedish counties located to the west of the nation’s capital, Stockholm.

Did you know that Swedes have a special word for taking a holiday in their own country?

To foreigners the word ‘svemester’ might seem odd but in Swedish, this new phrase is a way to describe a vacation or a trip that takes place within the country’s borders. It is a portmanteau of the words Sverige (Sweden) and semester (holiday).

The idea of ​​the campaign is to let the cities use their own advertising and social media channels to draw attention to each other and suggest attractions worth visiting in their neighbours.

“Many hotels reported that the number of visitors from the cities that participated in the campaign increased during the summer. Considering how involved we got, we hope and believe that there were many who took our invitation to spend a day with the neighbour to heart,” commented Jörgen Nilsson, responsible for hospitality at Visit Linköping & Co, the city’s tourist department. He added: “Nearby cities can be experienced as competitors, but showing ourselves as good neighbours leads to a greater success”.

The hope is that ‘48 hours with the neighbour’ will offer something for everyone. Whether these are families with children or single people, a friends’ crew or a childless couple. Several hotels have developed various offers to make a two-day trip to the neighboring towns even more attractive, there are tips about zoo visits, wakeboarding, boat trips and exciting museums.