Tavoite

Hankkeen päätavoitteena oli edistää Revontultentien varrella toimivien pienyritysten liiketoimintaa hyödyntämällä paikalliseen kulttuuriin liittyviä tarinoita sosiaalisesti ja kulttuurisesti kestävällä tavalla.  Tavoitteena oli myös luoda Revontultentien yhteistä tarinaa ja brändiä laatimalla reitille visio ja askelmerkit tavoitteen saavuttamiseksi. Projekti tuki uusien tarina- ja paikkaperusteisten digitaalisten liiketoimintakonseptien kehittämistä, osaamisen kehittämistä ja rajat ylittävää yhteistyötä uusilla, innovatiivisilla digitaalisilla ratkaisuilla. 

Tavoitteena oli:

1) tukea yrityksiä ja muita matkailualan sidosryhmiä oman liiketoiminnan kehittämisessä (digitaalisen tarinankerronnan tukiohjelma);

2) testata ja kehittää uudenlaisia digitaalisia sisältöjä yrityksille ja alueelle (pilotit);

3) viestiä ja jakaa tutkittua tietoa parhaista käytännöistä ja konkreettisista ratkaisuista (mm. digitaaliset ratkaisut/työkalut);

4) levittää kerättyjä ja tuotettuja tarinoita eri alustoilla (mobiilisovellus)

5) Revontultentien yhteisen tarinan ja brändin rakentaminen (visiotyö).

Tulokset

Supporting tourism companies

The project aimed to support tourism companies and other stakeholders in

developing their business through digital storytelling. To achieve this goal, the

project organized the Business Support Program, which allowed participants to

get support and develop their skills in digital storytelling and marketing

through various activities and events (listed below). The Program also

provided an opportunity for strengthening the cross-border cooperation and

growing network between companies.

Instead of three originally planned workshops the project organized four. Nine

webinars were organized as part of the Support Program. The webinars are

recorded and published on the project’s Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Cx0y0e1rMuiMvvhNMr1YLo20b5i

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Organized events and activities within the Support Program:

– four workshops

– eight webinars

– one networking online event

– series of cross-border cafe (online meetings)

– expert consultations (written feedback, discussions in group, individual

consultations etc.)

– lecture about animation.

 

Six company stories are published on Our Stories website and can be found

under the category Portrait https://ourstories.info/the-stories/

Other companies preferred to disseminate their stories through their own

marketing channels (for ex. website).

The covid significantly affected companies’ operations and financial stability,

especially for small-scale tourism companies. Companies did not have enough

resources, time and even motivation to stay active in the Program. That’s why

the amount of developed stories, especially digitized stories, is not so big.

However, entrepreneurs can continue to develop their stories produced during

the project, in the future. The project materials as well as the final publication

(digital guidelines) are available for companies use.

 

Vision work

The project implemented the vision work and produced the Northern Lights

Route vision 2030 in three languages (Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian). The

results are published on Lapland UAS’s Issuu account. During the vision work

the regional stakeholders had an opportunity to gather together for discussion

and contribute to the region’s development. The work done within this activity

has already benefited stakeholders. Thus, the Council of Torney valley took into

account the vision for developing its own strategy and implementing RDI

activities.

The absence of a Swedish partner caused challenges to reach stakeholders

from the Swedish side. With the help of the council of Torne Valley the project

succeeded in getting at least some Swedish participants. Another challenge was

a language issue. The regional stakeholders preferred to communicate and

participate in focus group discussion in their own language instead of english, as was planned originally. This required extra resources (time and personnel)

from the project.

Obviously the covid affected the implementation of this activity as well, but in

this case the effect was rather positive. For example, focus group discussions

were planned to be carried out physically, but due to the pandemic, these

discussions were held online. Because of this, we got more participants and

they did not need to travel.

 

Digital pilots

During the project period 11 digital pilots were produced. Eight of them were

selected to be published in digital guidelines.

– Eye-tracking technology

– 360 views (two pilots)

– Mobile application (incl. 360 views, gamification elements, 3D

– Virtual showroom

– A serie of friendship videos (published also on Youtube channel)

– A photo booklet (a guide on how to use photography in digital

marketing)

– Emotional instagram story

Eye-tracking, 360 views, mobile App and virtual showroom demonstrate digital

solutions, which can be utilized for creating digital stories and developing

digital marketing as well. The videos, photo booklet and Instagram posts work

as examples of utilizing storytelling content in marketing in order to create

appealing content and promote travel destinations of the region. The pilots

were produced by Lapland UAS’s tourism students.

Other three pilots were presented at the project’s events (webinar in June 2020

and workshop in October 2021) and published on the project’s Youtube

channel.

The first pilot was produced in spring 2020. Due to the pandemic and Lapland

UAS’s staff changes the production process was postponed to a later period.

Additionally, the benchmarking trip to the research center in Helsinki was not possible to organize. Due to the delay in the construction of the lab planned for

Lapland UAS’s Tornio campus, the creation of pilots based on AR/VR

technologies was limited.

 

Digital guidelines

Based on experience and knowledge gained during the project implementation,

the team designed and created the digital guidelines ‘Business storytelling

from A to Z: best practices on how to use storytelling as a marketing tool’

https://tietojenkasittely.lapinamk.fi/MyStory/index.html

The guidelines include visualized instructions and information on how to write

a business story, digitize it and utilize it in digital marketing. The guidelines

also give examples of different tools, including digital solutions, which can be

used to create interactive content for promoting tourism destinations.

Basically, the guidelines can be used by anyone who is interested in digital

storytelling and would like to develop business with the use of storytelling as a

marketing tool.

Since some activities of the project (Support Program, production of digital

pilots) were postponed, there was less time for production of the guidelines.

Collection and analyzing materials for the guidelines and its production were

challenging and required extra personnel resources.

 

Connecting the story content

The Our Stories website was integrated into the Council of Torne valley website

in order to improve the continuity of the project and the visibility of companies

and their stories. https://tornedalen.org/hankkeet/

The original plan was to integrate the website to Visit Sea Lapland’s mobile

App. The plan had to be changed, because the Visit Sea Lapland did not receive

resources to continue developing and maintaining the App.

Being a public, cross-border institution, the Council of Torne valley has both an

inherent incentive to promote all project participants and the resources to

maintain and further develop the website. The decision on transferring the

website to the Council was approved by the Interreg-secretary.