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A Case Study from and about former staff member of CEFE International
Susanne Bauer
berlinsights
visitors. business. events.
Many professionals come from abroad to visit the German capital. They come not as tourists, they come because they have a business or a conference to attend. But these visitors also want to get to know the city a bit, they want to get a glimpse of the story of Berlin - its rich and conflicted history, its vibrant urbanity, its eagerness to envision and build a new future.
And yet Berlin seems not quite accessible to visitors from abroad. Germany's capital is very German indeed, a mirror of the stark social homogeneity of German society and the country's lack of cultural diversity. The typical Berliner is not very competent in foreign languages, she or he is rarely open to or even interested in people from abroad. It is here where the idea of berlinsights emerges ...
Born and raised in Berlin myself, I have been dreaming for some time about starting my own business here in Berlin. After many years of training others to venture and take calculated risks with an enterprising spirit - the CEFE way -, now I am ready to put all this wisdom to the ultimate test: my own business. Using my various international contacts, the idea matured into a serious undertaking.
The idea of berlinsights is about addressing the professional interests of experts from abroad by providing tailor-made tours through the city. With berlinsights visitors learn about the city's specific development problems, they are given insights into how Berlin faces its manifold challenges and opportunities, they meet with real people telling them all about the real issues this changing city is dealing with - unemployment, economic constraints during public restructuring, scandals of financial corruption and still, an ocean of opportunities and entrepreneurial activity in the off-stream and often informal sectors of business and social life. This is our vision.
And so, when asked at very short notice to provide a tour with an emphasis on public management, we mustered all our courage and without even enough chairs to provide seating for all, welcomed our first visitors at berlinsights. Our impromptu guests, a group of about fourty public management students as well as faculty members, came from all over the world. At the end of the day, they got lost in the streets of Berlin-Mitte but enjoyed immensely our talks on Berlin employment features and the city's banking and corruption scandals.
At the same time, we grasped the opportunity to move into a temporary location, literally just a few steps away the Brandenburg Gate. A friend found the right building for the right price, and he needed others to share the premises and cover costs. Another friend decided to come on board and join the team. For proper planning and calculation (fictitious though as figures are!), berlinsights participated in a start-up competition. Results came out as expected: no services but production businesses won, and they are employees with big University hospitals and the like – little surprising, so we did not win! But still, it was worth the experience, and we know by now how to receive professional coaching to make our business grow.
berlinsights today is registered as a single-owned commercial enterprise, faced with all the typical problems and challenges of a nascent business. We are continuously confronted with open questions and unsolved bottlenecks:
– How small can we start? How much to invest in office logistics, equipment and furniture? What about hiring staff before the real business starts? Which risks to calculate, which risks to take? Right now, berlinsights is financed with private funds only, with no business loans.
– How big do we want to get? There is no way to guarantee business success, even if we know the four "must-haves" in production: (1) quantity, (2) quality, (3) time, and (4) cost. How can we know how many visitors will chose berlinsights, out of the annual total numbers of more than 13 million Berlin visitors in 2004, a number still on the raise? We have to find our market segment, enlarge and develop our focus on visitors from abroad who visit the city for mainly professional reasons. Berlin is the number three urban tourist attraction in Europe – besides London and Paris – and around 170.000 Berliners make their living in the tourist industry (providing accommodation and catering for their guests). But how can we generate added value for our customers when offering specialised tourist services? We are in the middle of finding our place, of positioning ourselves both in the City and its tourist industries.
– How good can we get, and for whom, and at what price? Berlin lacks international features of basic infrastructure (there is for example no international airport capable to respond to the transportation needs of our globalised world). Information and communication products mainly target the national market, with poor cultural marketing and little international customer orientation. berlinsights needs to hear and find out about the specific interests of its potential customers. And we have to set prices that cover costs, and that are within a price range that the market can bear.
Thus we gathered a pool of freelance tour guides, experts and human resources covering a wide range of Berlin-specific topics with international contacts and expertise. Given the high quality of this pool of experts, berlinsights does not compete with standard tour offers widely available in the tourism market. Instead it provides a highly demand-oriented range of special "insights tours" to discover Berlin. berlinsights tours supply the Berlin context for crucial development issues of international relevance.
– How innovative do we want to be? It seems there is hardly a limit to innovation. We developed the idea of "knowledge angels" to enrich our tour guides pool, a term borrowed from the "business angels" concept. We found such angels, senior experts in town who are thrilled to join the team, either on a voluntary basis, as true business partners, or as good friends giving valuable advice and "insights'", a must for berlinsights if our business wants to grow and broaden its range of topics and tour offers.
berlinsights is now in the process of forming partnerships with visitor services of international institutions, with organisations and with Berlin business partners who like berlinsights. The more we learn about our customers' interests in tailor-made tours, events and information packages, the better we can respond to that demand. We want to develop our specific segment of the tourism market, we want our customers to know us and come to us with their specific interests for tours and information. We see a bright future for the business and lots of fun with our Berlin visitors, no matter from where they are, what language they speak, no matter how much or how little time they have to enjoy the City of Berlin.