Where to, love? Planning a cycling holiday
Photo: Niclas Jessen/VisitDenmark Planning a cycling holiday can easily take longer than the trip itself. The internet is overflowing with information for cycle tourists and it can be difficult to navigate your way around the jungle
By Jesper Pørksen, Danish Cycling Tourism
Planning a cycle trip in Denmark should be easy, at least if you ask the Danish Cycling Tourism association. The main purpose of the association is to develop cycling tourism in Denmark and one of its objectives is to guide cycling tourists to a good cycling experience, even before they get on their bikes. That is the function of the website www.denmarkbybike.dk, which is based on the route planner, Naviki. The website presents and describes selected, quality checked routes and tour suggestions all over Denmark. You can also find accommodation, attractions, and other relevant points of interest. After you’ve planned your trip you can download it to your phone and GPS receiver.
A widget solution makes it easy to share the content and functionality of denmarkbybike with other websites. This has the advantage that the content only has to be updated once, and the digital traveler has access to the same information and functionality regardless of they search on denmarkbybike or a destination’s website. In the links below there are a few examples of the widget solution.
The digital cycling trip
Good digital information is essential. Almost all cycling holidays start on the internet. That’s a fact. Three out of four cycling tourists in Denmark have searched for online information prior to the trip. The most popular sites are the accommodation websites. These are followed by the destinations’ websites and in third place are the digital map services. If accommodation enterprises wishes to attract cycling guests, a website is a good place to start. But where do cycle tourists actually start, and how do we ensure that good, current information about cycling options is available across all websites?
Almost all cycling holidays begin with a Google search. This is an allegation, but in fact Google handles over 90% of searches and in Denmark it’s 97%. From Google the trip continues through the jungle of information to some of the above-mentioned websites. If you’re planning a longer cycling holiday you’ll most likely spend more time on the digital mapping solutions such as route planners and/or web portals. If you’ve booked accommodation and wish to find local cycling options you would probably search for information on the hotel’s or the destination’s website.
Popular national routes and cycling holidays with children
According to search trends our 11 national cycle routes in Denmark are popular. Danish and German tourists agrees on that statement. Danish cycle tourists are also interested in cycling holidays with children while Germans are more interested in how to travel to Denmark by bike. Denmark is the eighth most popular cycling country on the search result list. Holland, Austria and France head the list.
The national routes are coordinated in Denmark by the Danish Road Directorate. There is an overview map and a brief description of the routes on the Road Directorate website. Individual routes including the West Coast route, the Ancient Road Route, and the Copenhagen-Berlin route (national route no. 9 in Denmark) have their own websites.
Links:
https://www.naviki.org/da/denmarkbybike/
