CityDNA treated with the usual corporate bravado. People admitted uncertainty. And somehow, in doing so, the room felt more honest than most industry gatherings I ' ve attended in recent years.
The human side versus the data The conference theme wasn’ t merely poetic framing, it captured a genuine tension that Jamison-Woods believes is reshaping how cities think about their visitors.
“ Today’ s traveller, business or leisure, is looking for something that is meaningful,” she reflected.“ They’ re travelling through different lenses. It’ s not just all about the data. It’ s much more about personalisation, and about understanding your visitor and why they should be coming to your city.”
This was played out compellingly in the two sessions I moderated – Copenhagen and Linz – each presenting a case study in putting human values at the heart of destination strategy, albeit through entirely different doors.
Copenhagen: legacy as a living thing Gerda-Marie Rise, head of Copenhagen Legacy Lab at Wonderful Copenhagen, presented a session that fundamentally reframed what business events can mean for a city. Rather than treating congresses as economic transactions, Copenhagen has been asking a far more ambitious question: what if a medical congress could actually improve public health? What if a gathering of scientists could shift European policy?
Through three global legacy initiatives linked to major medical congresses, the approach shifts the framing entirely. It’ s not about what a congress delivers to the city, but what the city, together with its academic and civic institutions, can deliver through it: influencing policy, sharing best practice, improving citizen health at Danish, European and global levels.
It is a model that demands trust. Associations must be willing to embed legacy thinking not just into individual programmes but into their governance. And cities must be willing to invest in outcomes that are genuinely hard to measure. The traditional ROI toolkit simply doesn’ t stretch this far. But the alternative, continuing to count only what is easy to count, risks leaving the most meaningful value entirely invisible.
Linz: trusting the unexpected Marie-Louise Schnurpfeil, managing director, Visit Linz, arrived with something altogether different. A new brand positioning,‘ Take a risk. Visit Linz’. It is deliberately counterintuitive. And it works precisely because it trusts visitors enough to be honest about what it ' s offering: not the perfectly curated itinerary, but the authentic surprise.
Linz has developed an ecosystem bringing together stakeholders from culture, business, education, administration and tourism – and crucially, the city’ s own residents. The community here isn’ t backdrop; it’ s architecture.
The AI-powered campaign that brings the strategy to life doesn’ t try to predict the visitor’ s journey. It invites them to swap rigid itineraries for genuine discovery. Trade expectations for the unexpected. It is, at its core, an act of institutional trust.
Honesty as a feature What makes CityDNA distinctly valuable is something Jamison-Woods described as the willingness of members to be honest about what hasn’ t worked.
“ And you see a city like Rotterdam lifting a programme that Helsinki were doing, able to take that and readapt it and use it in their own city. We are a knowledge-sharing platform first and foremost.”
As she enters her final year as president, Jamison-Woods is clear about her priorities for CityDNA: strengthening the head office team, deepening commercial partnerships and ensuring the alliance’ s voice carries genuine weight where decisions are made, including in Brussels. Her guiding philosophy is refreshingly direct. If there’ s an elephant in the room, talk about it immediately.
What Helsinki told us Walking away from two days in the Finnish capital, I kept returning to that word- trust. It is not, as it turns out, a soft concept. It is a strategic one. It is what allows Copenhagen to ask associations to embed legacy into their governance. It is what allows Linz to tell visitors to abandon their plans. It is what makes a fellow DMO say“ Don ' t do what we did” in a room full of peers.
Helsinki itself reinforced the point quietly. Ranked number one in the Global Destination Sustainability Index for two consecutive years, it is a city where sustainability isn’ t an add-on but built into infrastructure, supply chains and mindset. Its Nordic design principles – clarity, functionality, wellbeing – shape a destination that feels effortless for delegates and purposeful for planners. Walkable, intuitive, calm and creative, it was the ideal setting for a conversation about what it means to put people at the centre of everything we do. n
n The CityDNA International Conference & General Assembly 2026 took place in Helsinki, April 22 – 24.
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