High-quality Partner Summit 2023 at the Cycle Week in Zurich

More than fifty friends and partners of Ride met at the first Ride Partner Summit on May 11, 2023. High-quality input in the form of presentations from tourism, industry and infrastructure was framed by an uncomplicated exchange. The event took place at the start of Cycle Week in Zurich to exploit synergies and will be continued the following year.

The showcase "The Place in Aosta" gave the participants of the Ride Partner Summit an insight into an unusual story from the mountain bike scene right at the start. Reto Aeschbacher from industry giant Scott showed how the locals from Aosta Valley Freeride put their heart and soul into turning a shabby building into a trendy meeting place for mountain bikers in Aosta.

Jonas Spöring then gave a review and outlook of Ride's tourism activities. With the reorientation after six years of the "Herbert.bike" project in Graubünden, the big step towards becoming an Alpine-wide service provider in mountain bike tourism took place at the beginning of 2023. With the "Ride Travel" tourism offensive, Ride is becoming active beyond the national borders. The aim is for mountain bikers to find a bike hotel near every single trail tour in the Ride trail database in the future.

A lively exchange of ideas, impressions and thoughts took place over lunch at veggie pioneer Hiltl in a relaxed and uncomplicated atmosphere. The theses on the development of e-mountainbikes presented by Ride founder Thomas Giger did not allow the participants to digress into the infamous food comma. The ten trends were discussed controversially, with voices from the bike industry, tourism and trail builders all having their say.

With an insight into the organization of Cycle Week, organizer Erwin Flury built a bridge to his event starting on the same day and showed how his two-wheeler event in Zurich is developing into an event for the masses. This year's four-day Cycle Week attracted over 80,000 visitors, making it the largest such event in Switzerland.

Severin Schindler from Vast Trails showed how trail builders juggle scarce resources and went into more detail about the exciting challenges of creating attractive trails for mountain bikers and other trail users. The subsequent discussion confirmed the thesis that there is no patent recipe for the perfect trail and was continued in a lively manner over drinks.

Further information on the event can be found at ride-mtb.com/summit