VisitKarelia Destination Destination Marketing Workshop with University of Eastern Finland

Snowshoeing on the Koli hill
Juho Pesonen
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University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and Visit Karelia are partnering to develop destination marketing innovations for North Karelia region. This partnership is part of the Destination Marketing course at the International Master’s Degree Programme in Tourism Marketing and Management (TMM), at UEF Business School in Joensuu. VisitKarelia is the local destination marketing organization (DMO), focusing on raising awareness of North Karelia region as a tourism destination.

These destination marketing innovations are divided into three workshops. The first workshop focuses on destinations as media. In the second workshop, we examine what it means for a destination to be a marketplace. The third workshop then discusses what kind of experience North Karelia could be for a tourist.

We also want to invite tourism stakeholders to participate in the workshops with us. If you are working in the tourism industry, studying tourism, or interested in destination marketing you are most welcome to attend these workshops with us. If you are going to participate, please register at https://elomake.uef.fi/lomakkeet/25238/lomake.html two days before each seminar.

The timetable for the workshops is as follows:

24.02.20 AG106 Agora-building Monday 12.15-16.00: VisitKarelia Workshop: Destination as a Media
10.03.20 N101 Natura-building Tuesday 12.15-16.00: VisitKarelia Workshop: Destination as a Marketplace
17.03.20 CANCELLED Tuesday 12.15-16.00: VisitKarelia Workshop: Destination as an Experience

Language in the workshops will be English and they are held at UEF Joensuu campus (Yliopistonkatu 2).

Descriptions of the workshops:

Every workshop starts with a 30-minute keynote from VisitKarelia CEO Jaakko Löppönen and Head of e-tourism research Juho Pesonen, from UEF. They will frame the workshop topic from their own perspectives and provide instructions for the group works. After the keynotes and discussion, the participants are grouped together and in groups, they can develop answers to these workshop topics and questions. After two hours of working time each group will have five to ten minutes to present their ideas. At the end of the workshop, the best ideas are selected.

Destination as a Media

Marketing has moved mostly to digital channels, but it is often supported by other, traditional offline channels. In digital marketing, the importance of interesting content is emphasized. Consumers spend hours watching digital media with their mobile phones, tablets, computers, and other devices. There is constant competition on the attention of the consumers. Those brands and businesses that are able to create content that people pay attention to are also the ones that consumers remember the best when they are making decisions. Being a media that people want to consume increases the mental availability of the destination.

This increasing media usage in digital channels is also changing branding and destination marketing. Destinations cannot just rely on marketing campaigns aiming to promote various seasons in the tourism destination but have to be constantly in the minds of the consumers. This requires DMOs to transform from marketing organizations into media organizations. The key questions are for example:

  • With what resources content is created?
  • How to create interesting content?
  • What kind of content works the best?
  • How to distribute content in various channels?
  • How to analyze the success of media-based destination marketing?

 

Destination as a Marketplace

It is not enough that people are aware that the destination exists. They also need to be able to buy services and trips easily. When it is easier to buy tourism services, people are more likely to do so. Destinations need to think how they organize distribution so that it is the most convenient for the tourists to buy the services they are interested in. There are various possibilities to do that. Visit Rovaniemi is using Bokun platform to make booking services easier (https://www.visitrovaniemi.fi/fi/) and Turku is using Doerz to help people find interesting things to see and do in the region (https://fi.doerz.com/turku). How could Visit Karelia be a marketplace for tourism products or is it even reasonable for the DMO to be the platform? What other options are there to make it easier for consumers to buy tourism products and services they are interested in?

 

Destination as an Experience

It doesn’t matter how great a destination is in marketing or sales if the customer experience in the destination does not meet and surpass consumer expectations. Customer experience is the sum of dozens if not hundreds of encounters between the tourist and the destination and people living and working in the destination. Tourism businesses are responsible for staging memorable experiences for consumers. Destination marking needs to be able to identify those experiences and make sure the tourists find the best things to see and do in the destination. However, what is best for whom differs from one tourist to another. Also, destination brands need to be experienced in tourism services in the region. What would be the key things to improve in North Karelia region in order to ensure that the experiences tourists have in this region are ones that make them happy and delighted to tell others, not to mention coming back to the destination in the future.