Interreg Baltic Sea Region Light in the Dark

Interreg Baltic Sea Region Light in the Dark – Increasing resilience in rural and coastal tourism in the northern Baltic Sea Region by developing off-season experiences

Seasonality is a challenge for many destinations worldwide. The off-season tourism period fall, winter, and spring in the northern Baltic Sea Region (BSR) is dark and cold, and often without snow because of proximity to and humidity from the sea. Poor weather conditions cause challenges for tourism and the problem is especially profound in rural and coastal areas in the northern BSR region. Currently during off-season, there are limited tourist activities and experiences and, therefore, nothing that attracts visitors.

The Interreg Baltic Sea Region project Light in the Dark responds to this need and supports the ability to respond to the BCR destinations’ common need to prolong the tourism season by developing a transnational northern Baltic archipelago concept for nature-based tourism.

The project will create fall-winter-spring service concepts consisting of three product experience packages under the concept Light in the Dark for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and destination management organisations in tourism to attract travelers during off-season. Transnational collaboration between universities, SMEs and business support organizations promotes coherent and synergistic implementation of the solution and add value by connecting all relevant stakeholders and businesses from different countries.

Partners

The project partnership is comprised of four universities of applied sciences, six business support organizations (of which four are destination marketing organizations and two business support organizations), and one partner represents the local and regional public authorities. Hence, the partnership is well-balanced from an organizational point of view. The geographical coverage is the northern Baltic Sea Region: Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Åland Islands.

The partners have considerable experience in tourism and business and their specific tasks in supporting competence in SMEs. They understand the challenges of the SMEs and have close contacts with SMEs operating in the tourism field in their regions. They have broad experience of tourism projects and of developing products and business models for tourism organisations. The project partners are: Novia University of Applied Sciences (lead partner), Åland University of Applied Sciences, Cursor Oy, Klaipeda University, Kurzeme Planning region, Visit Åland, Stockholm Business Region/Stockholm Archipelago, Hiiumaa Dvelopment Center, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonian Rural Tourism and Nida Culture and Tourism Information Centre "Agila".

A visitor analysis and a challenge inventory were already conducted, and the results are being analysed. Product and concept development with SMEs will be developed next. Later in the project partners will promote tourism products and experiences both digitally and through traditional marketing. Innovation processes will include service design tools and methods for co-creation. The products will be piloted and some competence building of the staff in the SMEs will take place.

Associated organisations

The project has 29 associated partners from all participating regions with the addition of Poland (and Gotland). All of them are small companies, representing all the northern BSR countries and their coastal, rural areas. The SMEs join the project as associated organisations due to economical limitations. However, SMEs from all countries were involved from the planning stage of the project, interested in being involved in creating new nature experiences. The SMEs have key business competences and will share their every-day challenges with the partners. They will be involved in the preparation and piloting, to ensure that the outputs from the project will correlate with the challenges.

International tourism in the Baltic Sea Region is growing, and products, solutions and common marketing efforts are needed to boost the competitiveness of this region.

The project is funded by the EU Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme.
Period: 9.8.2023 - 31.1.2027

References

Interreg Baltic Sea Region Light in the Dark – Increasing Resilience in Rural and Coastal Tourism in the northern Baltic Sea Region by Developing Off-Season Experiences (2024). Available at: https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/light-in-the-dark/

The blogpost has been reviewed by Novia's editorial board and accepted for publication on 24.4.2024