Copenhagen Tries Visitor Rewards for Greener City Trips

Copenhagen, Denmark, is testing CopenPay, a visitor-reward initiative. Organiser Wonderful Copenhagen announced that participating attractions would offer experiences in return for actions such as cycling or joining cleanups. More than 20 attractions were included in the summer launch. Fortune covered the initiative on 11 July 2024.

A small reward at the point of choice

The organiser's examples include museum tours, kayak hire and vegetarian lunches. Visitors can demonstrate participation with a train ticket, by arriving on a bicycle or with other simple evidence of the activity. The reward is an experience offered by a participating venue.

For a local operator, that creates a service encounter as well as a promotional opportunity. A guest needs to understand what is offered and how it relates to their activity. Clear explanations matter because an attractive invitation can lose its value if staff and visitors interpret it differently.

Partners make the programme tangible

A citywide name can introduce the idea, but individual venues deliver the experience. The quality of that encounter depends on ordinary details: whether information is easy to find, whether the offer is understood and whether the guest knows whom to ask a question.

Three questions for a participating venue

• Can a visitor explain the offer after reading it once?
• Does the team have a consistent description of the experience?
• Can feedback distinguish confusion about the offer from enjoyment of the visit?

Consider a hypothetical cultural venue that offers a short guided activity. Some guests might discover the venue through the reward; others might already have intended to visit. Both groups can enjoy the experience, but they tell different stories about its effect. That example is not a report about a particular CopenPay partner.

A pilot creates room to learn

The useful outcome of an experiment is not limited to counting rewards. It can also reveal which explanations work, which experiences people value and where partners encounter practical difficulties. Those findings would help distinguish an appealing concept from a programme that venues can deliver consistently.

Environmental results require their own evidence. Accepting a reward does not by itself establish how a visitor would otherwise have travelled or behaved. For local businesses, the immediate opportunity is more concrete: making a city initiative understandable through a well-delivered experience. The summer test can explore that relationship without its intended benefits being mistaken for results already demonstrated.