Hi Reader,

My first week stepping into this role has been challenging, in the best way.

There’s a lot happening behind the scenes, a lot to connect, and a lot of potential to unlock, which makes it a very interesting place to be right now.

Social Media — Let’s get things moving 📲

One of my first priorities is to reactivate Cycle Cities’ social media, mainly Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you’re not following Cycle Cities yet, now is a good moment to do it:

👉 Instagram​
👉 Facebook​
👉 LinkedIn​

And more importantly: engage.

Likes, comments, shares… it all helps.
It’s the simplest (and most effective) way to grow visibility and bring more people into the community.

Symposium News

Hamburg 2027 is already taking shape, and it’s looking like a great one.

Strong community roots, a committed host, and the right energy to bring people together again.

We’ll also be extending the early bird deadline by a couple of weeks.

If you haven’t booked yet, this gives you a bit more time, but don’t leave it too late.

Register NOW for Symposium 2027

Early bird tickets remain at €349 for now. Updated deadline coming soon.

Groupwork Gold Nuggets 💛

Groupwork continues to be one of the most valuable parts of Cycle Cities where real operators share what actually works on the ground.

Here are this week’s insights from Morning Group B: Growth Hackers: Sales & OTAs (Rob Dijkhuis, Ari Apteker, Tiago Monteiro, Rob Graham, Aitor Guadilla Olozaga, Emmanuel Darley).

Question 2. How are you incentivizing guests to book direct rather than through third parties?

Whatsapp Discussion

This week we picked up the OTA discussion from the last newsletter and it quickly turned into a very interesting exchange.

The starting point was simple:

👉 There’s no clear “secret weapon” when it comes to OTA's.

But what followed showed how different realities can be depending on the city and market:

💡 What came up in the discussion:

• Some operators are still highly dependent on OTAs
• Others (like in Australia) reported less than 5% OTA dependency
• In many cases, the ratio hasn’t changed significantly over time

So what’s driving the difference?

👉 Location, competition, and walk-in traffic
👉 Market dynamics vs customer behavior
👉 And how much effort goes into direct booking strategies

There’s also an interesting tension:

💡 From Insight to Action:

Based on this conversation, I revisited one of the resources we already had:

Spring Offers — Get Featured 🌱

We’re putting together a Spring Offers section on the Cycle Cities Google Business profile to help drive more visibility (and direct bookings).

We already have two offers coming in going live soon!

If you’d like to be included, send me a Whatsapp message with:

• Business name
• City
• Offer title
• Dates
• Image
• (Optional) details, code, link, T&Cs

Keep it simple, the goal is to get something visible.

To be added to the WhatsApp Community/Discussion group, fill out this form.

Community — What’s next

We’re getting very close to sharing the new community plan and there’s a lot of excitement around it on this side.

More structure, more clarity, and more ways to make this community even more valuable.

Coming very soon.

Isabella

Managing Director (Interim)
Cycle Cities 🚲