Best practice from Finland: the Visit Finland Academy
The Visit Finland Academy offers training paths consisting of intensive training days as well as separate thematic training for the Finnish tourism companies.
Background information
The Visit Finland Academy is a tailored approach to develop skills of the tourism sector in the Finnish context. The Academy is a link between the development activities made by Visit Finland and the tourism companies. It ensures that tourism development is aligned and coherent in Finland: without the Academy tourism development in the country would be very fragmented. In particular, the Academy serves micro and small size entrepreneurs’ interests. This means that training packages and courses are very practical, participative and include a lot of real-life examples.
Analysis and overview
Key principles
The Visit Finland Academy, established in 2016, is a training selection aimed at tourism destinations. The Academy is a tool for internationalisation, product development, sales and marketing to tourism companies that are ready for the international market or are interested in them, divided into three levels; Ready, Steady and Go. The Academy coaches (n=33 in July 2023) are experts from Visit Finland’s partner coach network and are also trained by Visit Finland. In addition to the subject area offered by each coach, the training also includes information about Visit Finland’s activities.
Examples and case studies
Related to digital skills, the focus is on marketing communication, search engine optimisation, social media marketing, distribution and sales channels. In addition, data management as well as digital customer journey and experience management. The main aim is for the participant to learn to increase the company’s digital discoverability and make it easier to purchase its products and services, to choose a suitable booking system, to set up an online store and choose suitable digital distribution channels for their products, to offer digital customer service and to utilise customer recommendations as part of digital discoverability.
For example, the Visit Finland Academy has a training day specially designed to support the Sustainable Travel Finland programme. The Sustainable Travel Finland training is the best possible way to get the sustainable tourism programme started in the destination and the entire business network of the destination involved in sustainable tourism activities. Concrete and practical training provides good basic information and a starting level for the systematic promotion of sustainable tourism at the company level. Although the content in the training concept is always the same, it is tailored to the specific needs of the destination.
Benefits and outcomes
The Academy ensures that the tourism sector in Finland has up-to-date knowledge and skills about the relevant topics to increase Finland’s competitiveness as a tourism destination and tourism development is coherent in Finland. As the volume of tourism is moderate and there are a lot of micro and small size tourism companies in Finland, the Academy serves their interests. It also responds to the needs of the micro- and small tourism companies who want to develop their business.
Responsibility and accountability
The training is booked and paid for by Visit Finland’s partners, such as regional tourism organisations, regional tourism projects or other regional development agencies who are responsible for tourism development in their region. Therefore, this is a network approach working through the network of different actors responsible for regional tourism development in collaboration with Visit Finland. The Academy, as a network of coaches, makes it easier for the developers to find trainers who upskill tourism companies. Therefore, the Academy is also a tool to make the training to upskill the sector easily accessible.
Measuring success
For the National Park, success means that they can contribute to the dissemination of environmental sustainability aspects and skills in as many forums as possible: regular lectures and presentations for university students and schoolchildren, number of tour guides trained by them.
References and external resources
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