Seven projects selected for the NICe tourism programme
Statistics on national tourism performance developed by the OECD show that the Nordic countries lag behind the average numbers for the other OECD members. This indicates that there is room for improvement for the Nordic tourism industry.
Tourism has great importance to the economies of the OECD nations and the Nordic countries have a great potential. In order to gain market share and confront increased global competition, the Nordic tourism industry must reposition itself and introduce new, innovative service offerings to meet the individual needs of modern travellers. NICe believes that the region is in position to act on this potential and that our new funding program “Innovation in Nordic Tourism – New Products and Services” will be an important contribution to the development of the sector.
NICe is proud to present a portfolio of seven innovation projects constituting the tourism programme “Innovation in Nordic Tourism – New Products and Services”. The selection process has been through several rounds of evaluation involving industry experts from all Nordic countries. We have performed an extensive analysis of each project application, its programme relevance, novelty value, potential Nordic dimension and impact, plan of action, deliverables, management consortium, and more.
The seven selected projects are considered by Nordic industry experts, NICe’s advisors and the NICe Board of Directors to have significant potential to contribute positively to the further development of the Nordic tourism sector. All seven selected projects contribute strongly to the goals of the program.
The tourism programme will start with a kick-off meeting at Iceland in April 2009. More information on the projects and programme will follow.
LIST OF THE PROJECTS CONSTITUTING THE PROGRAMME:
The seven projects address current challenges of the Nordic tourism sector and are expected to provide:
Tourism has great importance to the economies of the OECD nations and the Nordic countries have a great potential. In order to gain market share and confront increased global competition, the Nordic tourism industry must reposition itself and introduce new, innovative service offerings to meet the individual needs of modern travellers. NICe believes that the region is in position to act on this potential and that our new funding program “Innovation in Nordic Tourism – New Products and Services” will be an important contribution to the development of the sector.
NICe is proud to present a portfolio of seven innovation projects constituting the tourism programme “Innovation in Nordic Tourism – New Products and Services”. The selection process has been through several rounds of evaluation involving industry experts from all Nordic countries. We have performed an extensive analysis of each project application, its programme relevance, novelty value, potential Nordic dimension and impact, plan of action, deliverables, management consortium, and more.
The seven selected projects are considered by Nordic industry experts, NICe’s advisors and the NICe Board of Directors to have significant potential to contribute positively to the further development of the Nordic tourism sector. All seven selected projects contribute strongly to the goals of the program.
The tourism programme will start with a kick-off meeting at Iceland in April 2009. More information on the projects and programme will follow.
LIST OF THE PROJECTS CONSTITUTING THE PROGRAMME:
The seven projects address current challenges of the Nordic tourism sector and are expected to provide:
- New, innovative user-driven products and services
- Better communication and interaction with tourists
- New insights, knowledge and direction for sector development
- Better interaction and coordination between industry players, cross-border, cross-sector, public and private
SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE SELECTED TOURISM PROJECTS
Youth Spaces and the Alpine Tundra Regions (YOUSAT)
The project will invent and pilot a new technology for interactive nature based tourism exploration, including outdoor games and applications tailored to younger generation tourists. Combining modern hardware gadgets such as mobile phones, digital cameras, etc. with physical exploration of landscapes, interactive maps, quests/games, GPS positioning and social web publishing platforms allows for digital trails and instant sharing of experiences. The project will reduce gap between digital and traditional cultures, bring nature-based activities, new technologies and tourism closer together and stimulate young people to actively discover the outdoors. Improve environmental awareness and appreciation of Nordic natural resources and wildlife among young travelers. Develop applications tailored to communicate and interact through youth channels and mobile devices. The project is conducted in cooperation with the Swedish, Finish and Norwegian tourism association, and will provide the region with a unique and innovative tourism product to meet the needs of active young travelers.
Project manager: Karl-Petter Åkesson, SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB, Sweden
Participants
SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB, Sweden
University of Tampere, Finland
Idevio AB, Sweden
Svenska Turistföreningen, Sweden
Den Norske Turistforeningen, Norway
Suomen Latu, Finland
Today’s lead user shows tomorrow’s mainstream tourist offerings
The future of Nordic tourism can not rely on cost based competition but upon high-end tourism offerings and successful implementation of lead user driven innovation. The project will explore lead users’ role for innovation in high-end Nordic tourism companies, and to which extent some of the most successful Nordic tourism enterprises utilize their lead-users to develop ‘experience based’ and innovative tourism products. It will develop taxonomy for a wider understanding and teachings on improved innovation in Nordic tourism and tourist consultancy and policies. Through case studies, the project will describe specific steps that successful companies have taken in building up their business and provide knowledge as to what business framework conditions mean for leading tourism companies. All cases will focus on Nordic tourism SMEs and since the vast majority of all Nordic tourism companies are within this category the study results will have high relevance and impact.
Project manager: Eva Rikmann, Demirano Invest OÜ, Estonia
Participants:
Demirano Invest OÜ, Estonia
G.E. Consulting, Estonia
Christina Aas Travel Services, Norway
Bifröst University, Iceland
BDA Consulting SIA, Latvia
Sofia Wean Fashion, Denmark
Storytelling and destination development
Developing a platform across Nordic countries with help of a new model for using story-telling to develop common destination identity, values, cooperation and co-creation, and to develop destination offerings into comprehensive innovation systems. The objectives of this project are to develop user-driven communication platform that will facilitate the creation of a cross-Nordic storytelling interaction. In particular the project will focus on how storytelling is practiced, how it is organized and if and how a specific communication platform can improve storytelling practice in the Nordic countries and function as a means of closer stakeholder cooperation and improved tourist experiences. The empirical data collection will include case studies focusing on various concepts developed around storytelling in tourism. Each case story will be thoroughly analyzed and the usability of Basetool assessed. Critical moments in the storytelling processes will be identified and analyzed from a communication perspective. The research group will work in close contact with selected main actors (both public and private) in each case.
Project manager: Leena Mossberg, BI Norwegian School of Management, NO
Participants:
HANKEN School of Economics, Finland
BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway
Aalborg University, Denmark
Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, Iceland
University Vest, Sweden
Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Pacific
The Asia and Pacific represents a huge and important market for Nordic tourism. Asian travelers are no more solely relying on glossy brochures, slick travel magazines or national websites to make decisions on what to do and where to go on their holidays. The numbers of people in all age brackets using websites that specialize in letting travelers share their stories are rising rapidly. Many Asian tourists post experiences on Asian social media platforms (equivalent of Facebook, MySpace, etc.) but information is scattered and lost across the Internet. As with most things on the web, the sheer number of new community websites makes it increasingly harder to access the most relevant information for the user. The travelers’ needs for easy access to relevant and attractive websites with stories and visuals from other people’s experiences in the Nordic countries will be met in this project “Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Pacific”. The Project aims to utilize web crawl/search technology to gather, analyze and present Asian content on the Nordic region and to share knowledge with new Asian tourists and Nordic Tour Operators. This project aims to provide the best web 2.0 platform of Asian and Pacific tourists’ generated content on Nordic tourism.
Project manager: Søren Leerskov, Scandinavian Tourist Board Asia & Pacific
Participants:
Scandinavian Tourist Board, Japan
Niels Bohr Institute, Komplekse Systemer, Denmark
CBS, Center for Tourism and Culture Management, Denmark
Brainstorm DA, Norway
Visit Sweden, Sweden
Visit Denmark, Denmark
Innovasjon Norge, Norway
SAS Intercontinental
Nordic event tourism network
Festivals are important magnets for Nordic tourism, attracting people year round from near and far, and important to counter seasonality. They contribute positively to local and regional economic and cultural development. There are many different types of festivals, but almost all face the same challenges of financial, visitor, and stakeholder management. Despite the increasing interest in attending and organizing events in the Nordic region, many players face difficulties to survive in this field. The project seeks to gather and share knowledge on festival management and is dedicated to gather, summarize and share knowledge on festival management within the scope of three subprojects. The objective of this project is to generate and share knowledge about festival and event management that will help organizers to innovate and improve current practice. Focus will be on three overarching topics, best practices in strategic leadership, innovation in networks, and visitor mapping. This will be achieved by establishing a knowledge sharing platform among festival managers in four Nordic countries; an online databank on management issues, and mentorship meetings mingling academic researchers and festival managers. The project also plans to develop and test a novel technology to map visitor moving and behavior patterns, which could provide valuable knowledge on festival hotspot and consumption.
Project manager:
Szilvia Gyimothy, Lund University, Department of Service Management, SE
Participants:
Lund University, Sweden
School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Norwegian School of Hotel and Management, University of Stavanger, Norway
European Tourism Research Institute, Mid Sweden University, Sweden
Esrum Kloster & Møllegård, Denmark
Ekstremsportsveko, Norway
Storskjöyran Festival AB, Sweden
Ferdaskrifstofa Austurlands, Iceland
Nordic Well-being - A health tourism approach to enhance competitiveness of Nordic region
Nordic Well-being in an innovation perspective is related to developing a particular Nordic content of well-being to be offered by tourism enterprises and destinations across the five Nordic countries. Well-being will be seen as an umbrella and the Nordic Wellness as a more specific segment area within well-being. Nordic Well-being will need to be identified as an industry area and conceptualized in terms of concrete products. The project will explore the region’s possibilities for health- and well-being tourism. In a competitive market mainly within EU, Nordic well-being concepts need to be differentiated from other well-being concepts, by innovatively creating products based in the regions unique resources. The main aim of the project is to create a new specific Nordic tourism product concept based on unique values in the Nordic countries anchored e.g. in nature, cleanliness, health image and values of the northern hemisphere of Europe. The other aim is to tackle seasonality at tourism destinations, partly by catering to the elderly segment. Well-being and wellness is a year round activity. The project aims to identify concrete activities and experiences for body and mind, as well as development of ideas for new wellness products.
Project manager: Anja Tuohino, University of Joensuu, Finland
Participants:
University of Joensuu, Finland
European Research Institute, MidSweden University, Sweden
BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway
Hanken School of Economics, Finland
Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, Iceland
SILAB
Project description: HAAGA-HELIA University of applied sciences has developed a system, called Service Innovation Laboratory (SILAB), aiming to creating service innovations by making people from different industries to ‘collide’. The SILAB system is operational (85 companies, over 300 collisions, evaluated as ‘highly useful’). By facilitating cross-sector meetings of professionals, knowledge developed in many different fields of expertise may be combined, thereby indentifying best-practices and leading to new innovative products and service in the tourism industry. The project seeks to enlarge the piloted SILAB approach from Finland to other Nordic countries in order to utilize the state-of-the-art knowledge of larger geographical area.
Project manager: Teemu Moilanen, HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Science, FI
Participants:
HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Stavanger University, Institute of Economy and Management, Norway
Centre of Expertise for Tourism and Experience Industry, Finland
FIN-S Markand & Kommunikation, Sweden
Youth Spaces and the Alpine Tundra Regions (YOUSAT)
The project will invent and pilot a new technology for interactive nature based tourism exploration, including outdoor games and applications tailored to younger generation tourists. Combining modern hardware gadgets such as mobile phones, digital cameras, etc. with physical exploration of landscapes, interactive maps, quests/games, GPS positioning and social web publishing platforms allows for digital trails and instant sharing of experiences. The project will reduce gap between digital and traditional cultures, bring nature-based activities, new technologies and tourism closer together and stimulate young people to actively discover the outdoors. Improve environmental awareness and appreciation of Nordic natural resources and wildlife among young travelers. Develop applications tailored to communicate and interact through youth channels and mobile devices. The project is conducted in cooperation with the Swedish, Finish and Norwegian tourism association, and will provide the region with a unique and innovative tourism product to meet the needs of active young travelers.
Project manager: Karl-Petter Åkesson, SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB, Sweden
Participants
SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB, Sweden
University of Tampere, Finland
Idevio AB, Sweden
Svenska Turistföreningen, Sweden
Den Norske Turistforeningen, Norway
Suomen Latu, Finland
Today’s lead user shows tomorrow’s mainstream tourist offerings
The future of Nordic tourism can not rely on cost based competition but upon high-end tourism offerings and successful implementation of lead user driven innovation. The project will explore lead users’ role for innovation in high-end Nordic tourism companies, and to which extent some of the most successful Nordic tourism enterprises utilize their lead-users to develop ‘experience based’ and innovative tourism products. It will develop taxonomy for a wider understanding and teachings on improved innovation in Nordic tourism and tourist consultancy and policies. Through case studies, the project will describe specific steps that successful companies have taken in building up their business and provide knowledge as to what business framework conditions mean for leading tourism companies. All cases will focus on Nordic tourism SMEs and since the vast majority of all Nordic tourism companies are within this category the study results will have high relevance and impact.
Project manager: Eva Rikmann, Demirano Invest OÜ, Estonia
Participants:
Demirano Invest OÜ, Estonia
G.E. Consulting, Estonia
Christina Aas Travel Services, Norway
Bifröst University, Iceland
BDA Consulting SIA, Latvia
Sofia Wean Fashion, Denmark
Storytelling and destination development
Developing a platform across Nordic countries with help of a new model for using story-telling to develop common destination identity, values, cooperation and co-creation, and to develop destination offerings into comprehensive innovation systems. The objectives of this project are to develop user-driven communication platform that will facilitate the creation of a cross-Nordic storytelling interaction. In particular the project will focus on how storytelling is practiced, how it is organized and if and how a specific communication platform can improve storytelling practice in the Nordic countries and function as a means of closer stakeholder cooperation and improved tourist experiences. The empirical data collection will include case studies focusing on various concepts developed around storytelling in tourism. Each case story will be thoroughly analyzed and the usability of Basetool assessed. Critical moments in the storytelling processes will be identified and analyzed from a communication perspective. The research group will work in close contact with selected main actors (both public and private) in each case.
Project manager: Leena Mossberg, BI Norwegian School of Management, NO
Participants:
HANKEN School of Economics, Finland
BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway
Aalborg University, Denmark
Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, Iceland
University Vest, Sweden
Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Pacific
The Asia and Pacific represents a huge and important market for Nordic tourism. Asian travelers are no more solely relying on glossy brochures, slick travel magazines or national websites to make decisions on what to do and where to go on their holidays. The numbers of people in all age brackets using websites that specialize in letting travelers share their stories are rising rapidly. Many Asian tourists post experiences on Asian social media platforms (equivalent of Facebook, MySpace, etc.) but information is scattered and lost across the Internet. As with most things on the web, the sheer number of new community websites makes it increasingly harder to access the most relevant information for the user. The travelers’ needs for easy access to relevant and attractive websites with stories and visuals from other people’s experiences in the Nordic countries will be met in this project “Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Pacific”. The Project aims to utilize web crawl/search technology to gather, analyze and present Asian content on the Nordic region and to share knowledge with new Asian tourists and Nordic Tour Operators. This project aims to provide the best web 2.0 platform of Asian and Pacific tourists’ generated content on Nordic tourism.
Project manager: Søren Leerskov, Scandinavian Tourist Board Asia & Pacific
Participants:
Scandinavian Tourist Board, Japan
Niels Bohr Institute, Komplekse Systemer, Denmark
CBS, Center for Tourism and Culture Management, Denmark
Brainstorm DA, Norway
Visit Sweden, Sweden
Visit Denmark, Denmark
Innovasjon Norge, Norway
SAS Intercontinental
Nordic event tourism network
Festivals are important magnets for Nordic tourism, attracting people year round from near and far, and important to counter seasonality. They contribute positively to local and regional economic and cultural development. There are many different types of festivals, but almost all face the same challenges of financial, visitor, and stakeholder management. Despite the increasing interest in attending and organizing events in the Nordic region, many players face difficulties to survive in this field. The project seeks to gather and share knowledge on festival management and is dedicated to gather, summarize and share knowledge on festival management within the scope of three subprojects. The objective of this project is to generate and share knowledge about festival and event management that will help organizers to innovate and improve current practice. Focus will be on three overarching topics, best practices in strategic leadership, innovation in networks, and visitor mapping. This will be achieved by establishing a knowledge sharing platform among festival managers in four Nordic countries; an online databank on management issues, and mentorship meetings mingling academic researchers and festival managers. The project also plans to develop and test a novel technology to map visitor moving and behavior patterns, which could provide valuable knowledge on festival hotspot and consumption.
Project manager:
Szilvia Gyimothy, Lund University, Department of Service Management, SE
Participants:
Lund University, Sweden
School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Norwegian School of Hotel and Management, University of Stavanger, Norway
European Tourism Research Institute, Mid Sweden University, Sweden
Esrum Kloster & Møllegård, Denmark
Ekstremsportsveko, Norway
Storskjöyran Festival AB, Sweden
Ferdaskrifstofa Austurlands, Iceland
Nordic Well-being - A health tourism approach to enhance competitiveness of Nordic region
Nordic Well-being in an innovation perspective is related to developing a particular Nordic content of well-being to be offered by tourism enterprises and destinations across the five Nordic countries. Well-being will be seen as an umbrella and the Nordic Wellness as a more specific segment area within well-being. Nordic Well-being will need to be identified as an industry area and conceptualized in terms of concrete products. The project will explore the region’s possibilities for health- and well-being tourism. In a competitive market mainly within EU, Nordic well-being concepts need to be differentiated from other well-being concepts, by innovatively creating products based in the regions unique resources. The main aim of the project is to create a new specific Nordic tourism product concept based on unique values in the Nordic countries anchored e.g. in nature, cleanliness, health image and values of the northern hemisphere of Europe. The other aim is to tackle seasonality at tourism destinations, partly by catering to the elderly segment. Well-being and wellness is a year round activity. The project aims to identify concrete activities and experiences for body and mind, as well as development of ideas for new wellness products.
Project manager: Anja Tuohino, University of Joensuu, Finland
Participants:
University of Joensuu, Finland
European Research Institute, MidSweden University, Sweden
BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway
Hanken School of Economics, Finland
Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, Iceland
SILAB
Project description: HAAGA-HELIA University of applied sciences has developed a system, called Service Innovation Laboratory (SILAB), aiming to creating service innovations by making people from different industries to ‘collide’. The SILAB system is operational (85 companies, over 300 collisions, evaluated as ‘highly useful’). By facilitating cross-sector meetings of professionals, knowledge developed in many different fields of expertise may be combined, thereby indentifying best-practices and leading to new innovative products and service in the tourism industry. The project seeks to enlarge the piloted SILAB approach from Finland to other Nordic countries in order to utilize the state-of-the-art knowledge of larger geographical area.
Project manager: Teemu Moilanen, HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Science, FI
Participants:
HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Stavanger University, Institute of Economy and Management, Norway
Centre of Expertise for Tourism and Experience Industry, Finland
FIN-S Markand & Kommunikation, Sweden
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