Service Providers for Tourists

Vacation in the Rhineland:

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• Services
• Welcome Card
• Active holidays
• The Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR)

With around 3 million visitors, Cologne Cathedral is Germany’s most popular tourist sight. Thomas Cook began international tourism here in the 19th century on the romantic Rhine – a world cultural heritage site like the Cathedral – and the Brühler Schlösser (Brühl castles). The unique museum landscape here, for example the Bonn »Museum Mile«, appeals to both culture vultures and those with a sweet tooth (Chocolate Museum in Cologne). For visitors who enjoy something more active, there is Europe’s oldest and most spectacular pleasure park – the Phantasialand in Brühl, as well as the Michael Schumacher Kart Center in Kerpen.

Services

The Rhineland offers visitors a wide range of tourist attractions. The cathedral city of Cologne as well as Bonn, the city where Beethoven was born, are both, with a wide range of events and cultural highlights, ideal as destinations for a city break. Congress centres, exhibition and event halls, hotels and service providers offer the perfect infrastructure for meetings, incentives, conventions and events (MICE).
KölnTourismus, the city’s tourism authority, markets the cathedral city and surrounding region around the whole world including at international tourism exhibitions. The company, with offices directly by the cathedral, is the main contact point for individual tourists and can provide accommodation and organise guided tours and city trips as well as Cologne related gifts and souvenirs.

Besides a considerable range of guided tours, the Cologne Tourist Board offers now an option for individual travellers who prefer to explore the city on their own instead of joining a group. Using a small hand computer, visitors can enjoy an audio-visual walking tour of Cologne and discover the most important sights between the Cathedral and Heumarkt square. With spoken commentary and corresponding images, the well-elaborated route guides you to numerous fountains, monuments and buildings.
The iGuide is very easy to handle: Just a few buttons allow a maximum of options. Pressing a button one can abbreviate operating processes, interrupt the tour or comments and return to particularly attractive sights. Visitors are provided with a convenient city map that shows the walking route with individual sights. The iGuide is available in English or German.

Welcome Card

The Köln WelcomeCard provides 85 offers now, first of all free travel by bus or rail throughout the entire region of the Rhine-Sieg transport network (VRS). But there is more, reduced admission fees to Cologne museums as well as to many other attractions in Cologne and beyond. Visitors can experience the Cologne theatre and music scene at considerably reduced admission fees, explore Cologne and the region by ship or enjoy traditional dishes served in Cologne restaurants or exceptional drinks and exquisite menus in Cologne hotel bars and restaurants.
Further attractive partners of the Cologne environs such as the Kerpen kart track, the Königswinter Sea Life centre, the Frechen Keramion museum and many more partners in the Bonn region round up the large scale of interesting features. All partners are located in the VRS public transport service area. Another offer focuses on beauty and spa.
The Pink WelcomeCard, includes additional discounts at opera, theatre and river cruises, at bars, clubs, saunas and shops for Gays and Lesbians.

The hop-on, hop-off buses, a special highlight of the Cologne sightseeing programme, allow passengers to get on and off at many sights and then continue their journey later on enabling them to put together their very own individual sightseeing programme of art, culture and shopping.

Active holidays

The region is also very popular for short breaks and active holidays with many sporting possibilities. The Bonn region as well as the Rhine-Erft and Rhine-Neuss districts all also promote cycling tourism.
The Eifel region offers, in particular, many possibilities for relaxation as well as the only national park in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Here visitors can discover the region independently through forests and along rivers and lakes or, alternatively, take part in a guided wilderness tour.

The Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR)

The Rhineland is a vibrant cultural region which is rich in history. Located in the heart of Europe, it has many cultural traces and evidence from past millennia. Brauweiler abbey, which dates from 1024, is one of the most beautiful, preserved abbey sites in the Rhineland. The Rhineland Regional Association (LVR) has developed this into a regional cultural centre which aims to preserve cultural heritage:
• With the »Landesinitiative Substanzerhalt« (State Initiative for Material Preservation), Brauweiler abbey has developed into a centre of excellence for preserving valuable archive material in North Rhine-Westphalia and protects paper documents from decay. Hereby acid is removed from the paper and this prolongs longevity.
• The LVR Brauweiler Archive Advice and Training Centre offers advice on and promotes Rhenish museums and around 340 non-state archives in the Rhineland. It also offers museum and archive employees extensive training possibilities. The LVR archive is also housed here.
• Pioneering is also the »Schaumagazin« (Show Magazine) in Brauweiler abbey of the art funds foundation which is supported by the LVR and the state of NRW. The foundation offers a home for artists’ estates with the aim of archiving and preserving them and making them accessible to a broad public.
• There are more than 100,000 historical monuments in the Rhineland which give information on the state’s rich cultural history. This cultural treasure should be constantly supervised, detailed, researched and conveyed to the public. The LVR authority for historic preservation is dedicated to such work. Here experts work in inventory, (art) monument preservation, documentation as well as restoration and also provide information on architectural and art history as well as technical and conservation matters.

The Rhineland Regional Association (LVR) works as a communal association with ca. 15,000 employees for around 9.6 million people in the Rhineland. It works in the areas: support for disabled and young people, psychiatry and culture.
The museums of the Rhineland Regional Association are the highlights of the region and attract around one million visitors annually.