Co-Creating a New Tourism Concept for the Baltic Sea Region
An Instagram post by Visit Jurmala presents the town in the autumn as a “place where mind and body find harmony, where nature’s inspiration renews the spirit, preparing for the quiet embrace of the darker season ahead”. Walking along the beach in Jurmala, Latvia in October on a day when rain can be expected any time, when daylight is scarce and with the wind whipping one’s face, one can sense that it is nature’s way to renew itself and embrace the dark season ahead. Hotel Jurmala Spa and Conference Center off the beach of Jurmala, was the venue where the Light in the Dark project met for its second face-to-face partner meeting.
The project partners met between October 30-October 31, 2024, collaborating with 56 visit organisations and participating tourism entrepreneurs. One of the main aims of the meeting was to ensure that all participants mingled as much as possible and got to know each other and share experiences. Another thing that the Novia team had discussed beforehand was to facilitate the workshops ‘in the moment’ and be agile if we saw a need for that. The organising team wanted to make the best possible use of this face-to-face meeting and, hence, division into constant new groups was used. The meeting kicked off with Sintija Pusaudze from Liepāja Region Tourism Information Office, also a board member at Liepaja Travel, who delivered an inspiring and energetic keynote about travel trends, digitalization, and customized experiences with colourful examples of successful marketing efforts.
Pär Johansson from Stockholm Archipelago, Stockholm Business Region has been working on developing an overall concept for the Nordic Baltic Sea region and one of the highlights of this meeting was his reveal of the concept draft. The region’s biggest challenge is the lack of spectacular highlights, especially during the low season. The concept that Pär presented promotes the common cultural and societal values found in the Nordic and Baltic countries. A region where the quality of life is based upon access to nature, outdoor life and hearty foods. The emotional concept reflected these values, and the draft form will be improved before being piloted.
After the Light in the Dark concept was revealed, it was time for the tourism entrepreneurs to reveal their ideas for new off-season products to the project partners. The creative speed product session sparked ideas on how to possibly develop the initial ideas further, to become sellable in a competitive market.
The day culminated in a dinner that brought the partners together. Over local delicacies like fresh fish, meats, and berries, networks were strengthened, and new collaborations were born. The sound of traditional Latvian music played on the kokle, a native string instrument, added a splendid cultural touch to the evening.
The second day of the meeting started with an online session about distribution channels in the DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), presented by tourism specialist Jan Baldur from Nordic Marketing. Jan talked of the necessity to work with tour operators on the German market and raised the positive travel trends that are relevant for the Baltic Sea Region.
After the keynote, the project partners, the invited DMOs and SMEs were divided into workshop sessions. Project partners worked on the plans and schedules where both the concept and experiences will be piloted in all participating regions and countries in 2025. This is a comprehensive task as a total of 18 pilots will be executed, evaluated and complied into handbooks, which will be subsequently distributed to SMEs and DMOs throughout the region.
The SMEs were once more divided into new constellations and worked in a learning café. A learning café is a practical and creative way to enrich the discussion. In the different learning café stations, the SMEs benchmarked each other’s best practices and explored new innovative strategies for marketing the Northern Baltic Sea region. Pricing strategies and distribution are important aspects and were discussed and pondered upon at different stations. In the fourth learning café table, the entrepreneurs brainstormed how to design experiences around darkness and silence.
During the learning café the entrepreneurs expressed an interest to exchange instagram accounts to be able to follow each other. Consequently, we devoted ten minutes to a mobile phone mingle party, where instagram accounts were shared among those that wanted to.
Thank you to Anna Elizabete Upsava from Kurzeme Planning Region for organizing and hosting a successful meeting together with project leader James Simpson. A face-to-face meeting beats online sessions anytime and it feels in hindsight that the process to develop the Northern Baltic Sea region into a new and fascinating off-season tourism region took a big leap forward thanks to this event. A very important spice in the mix was the enthusiastic, driven and passionate tourism entrepreneurs from five different countries and seven different tourism regions. Thank you for helping us by creating new off-season experiences and products for your companies that can be marketed under the new unravelling umbrella, the Northern Baltic Sea region. Like Pär Johansson said in his concept reveal, “why travel to Mediterranean when we have the Baltic”?
Pictures taken by Mathias Gröndahl.
The Travel report has been reviewed by Novia's editorial board and accepted for publication on 11.11.2024
ISSN: 2670-028X
