Digitalisation has been placed in the center of tourism development in whole Finland. During years, the development of tourism in Kymenlaakso has been successful in conceptualization and marketing. Because most of the companies are small, they are lacking skills and knowledge what comes to customer expectations or requirements of the international marketing especially in digitalisation. However, tourism is one of the fastest growing businesses which is affected by the constant changes of digital services.
Actions
The digitalisation of Kymenlaakso starts by gaining understanding of customers and digitalisation with different measurements, metrics and researches. Based on these, it is possible to choose the right ways, channels and messages to increase the digital attractiveness of the area by emphasizing the attractions, by developing the online presence of companies, services and customers. Furthermore, efforts will be laid for online visibility, marketing and sales with specific view on the customer journey. This happens by training and educating the companies and other travel actors in different motivation and information events as well as specific workshops concentrating on the very challenges named by entrepreneurs.
Visit Finland has created a Digital Roadmap to guide destinations and other tourism organisations. This project aims to promote the ideas in this roadmap for Kymenlaakso area with different sales, promotion and marketing tools and options.
XAMK has been discussing the cooperation concerning the development of online customer experience metrics for digiroadmap with VF. The results of this discussion will also benefit this project.
The new EU directive of the accessibility of public pages want to guarantee the parity of people in digital society. One of the aims of this project is to get this sertificate for the Visit pages as one of the first in Finland. This also enhances the equality.
Besides the development of mere digitalisation, the aim of this project is to strengthen the cooperation in the Kymenlaakso. One of the indicators of this is the consortio in this project: the two development companies and the UAS. The development organisations in Kymenlaakso have strenghten their cooperation during the past years and as the result of this project the Tourism Advisory Board for Kymenlaakso will be established.
In order to activate entrepreneurs and other tourism related actors the tourism parliament of Kymenlaakso (Kymenlaakson Matkailuparlamentti) will be organised as a joint effort.
Results
With the help of the activities mentioned above, the vigority and the attractiveness of the area will be risen and thus the economic sustainability will be affected. With the help of digitalisation this can be done sustainably without e.g. paperwaste or lots of driving from one place to another. Also cooperation between entreprenurs and other actors enhances the social responsibility. Social and economic aspects are also taken into consideration by education the actors in order to give them tools for future development and success.