IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CULTURALTOURISM 2011 PROJECT SPRING 2011

The project implementation has proceeded with speed during this year and main activities has concentrated in the product development and marketing.

The project marketing activities

All marketing activities have based on our marketing plan and main target markets have been Germany and Sweden. Russia is also an important target market but due to EU-funding regulations the project can not target any actions there, so all those actions lies on the responsibility of our partner com-panies.

Germany

The project has a contract concerning the marketing and promotion in German with Nordic Marketing GmbH, Germa-ny. The contract includes:

• The organising presentation event of the CT 2011 pro- ducts at ITB fair for tour operators and press • The producing the product manual with cross border products specially targeted to German markets• Sales visits to the tour operators• Building up and updating the CT blog, FB-pages and Twitter pages in German language, www.turkutallinn.com• Follow up of results and visitors figures of social media and press articles

The ITB press and marketing event 8.3.2011 was very suc-cessful and it was done together with Turku and Tallinn 2011 foundations. They had a separate press event after our mar-keting event and all together we had over 30 participants from tourism business and press.

Sweden

The project organised a marketing and press event for tour operators selling Finland and Estonia in Stockholm 10.5.2011. Martin Ahlberg, FIN-S Markands och Kommunikation was responsible for arrangements of the event. Into the event participated 18 entrepreneurs from our partner companies and visited around 30 buyers / tour operators and press rep-resentatives. The event was very successful and we got a lot of good response from both sellers and buyers.

Cooperation with partner companiesThe cooperation with entrepreneurs has generally been very intensive and it has been a great pleasure to notice how ac-tive our partners have been. Especially this has been easy to notice in product development where they have participated altogether 10 different meetings dealing with productions for the joint products. The project will also like to give special thanks to our experts creating the cross border products Merja Hart from the Travel Experience, Finland and Külli

Eller from Oilinvest OÜ Estonia. They made it possible that we now have 4 interesting products including our main sights and services in both cities.

Product Development /Quality Tourism Products

Project invited cultural and tourism actors/enterprises to coop-eration organizing in March 2010 open call (local newspaper ads) to create Tallinn-Turku based joint cultural tourism tour pack-ages. Both in Tallinn and Turku there were 15 organizations or companies interested in project. These 30 enterprises/organiza-tions from Culture and Tourism field took part in product devel-opment process that was followed through under management of experts Merja Hart and Külli Eller.

Kick off –meeting• was organized on 4.10.2010 at Esto-nian Art Museum KUMU, Tallinn with 19 representatives of Partner Companies and WP2 members from both countries. During the meeting were chosen 4 themes for upcoming new tour packages: Modern Life in HistoricalTowns, Facing the Sea, Design & architecture in Turku & Tallinn and Food culture / Feed Your Soul.

After defining the themes there were • workshops in both cities, one half day workshop on each theme during which all upcoming ideas were gathered by expert-moderator: 18.-19.10.2010 In Tallinn (11 participants), moderator Külli Eller and in Turku on 25.10. and 27.10.2010. Participants: from 8 to 15 persons depending on the theme of workshop. Moderator Merja Hart. On 3.11.2010 gathered 20 representa tives of Estonian and Finnish Partner Companies to Follow up-meeting in Helsinki to decide the contents of new tour packages.

During November-December 2010 experts formulated the • modules into ready products from the material sent by partner companies. The result: 4 themed joint tour packages that are for sale by selected partner companies but they also serve as pattern for tour operators who are interested in further developing of analogous products.

Distribution of the material of 4 joint theme tour packages:

Material input on project´s workspace (www.culturaltour-• ism2011.com) with links to sales channels and partners

Printed material (leaflets) ready for Matka2011 - presentation • of products on 20.1. in Helsinki at Messukeskus

ITB 9.3.2011 + sales manual for German tour operators by • Nordic Marketing (leaflets in German + special Sales Manual)

Promotion of project and the themed tour packages for • Swedish tour operators on 10.5.2011 in Stockholm

Films made on basis of these joint tour packages you can see on project´s Facebook site www.facebook.com/cultourism2011 or at www.turkutouring.fi page.:Scroll all the way down and on the bottom on the right hand side you see title: Kehitystoiminta and under that Hankkeet. Click it and there is the film presenting Tallinn – Turku cross border products.

We have also produced marketing and information material to the different marketing and press events. Some of them are possi-ble to down load from our workspace (www.culturaltourism2011.com) or you can also ask from Elena Natale, Tallinn 2011 founda-tion to send it to you. (elena.natale@tallinn2011.ee)

Creation of E-learning entities

E-learning entities are targeted to people interested in or working in culture and tourisms business. The idea is to give to entrepre-neurs an easy access to information how to developed own busi-ness in given themes. The material is formulated to act like self learning tool with interactive response. The entities will be located at www.Kulmat.fi and also for Cultural Tourism 2011 project part-ners at our workspace www.culturaltourism2011.com.

Different themes of e-learning (available during the summer)1) Pricing the tourism products2) Accessibility of the products 3) Traditional distribution channels4) ABC of marketing planning5) Service chain mapping6) Hospitality programme for service providers

The implementation of the e-learning entities is now ongoing and couple of the entities is already ready and of them is in test use at www.Kulmat.fi. You are welcome to familiarize yourself with it. (Registration https://www.kulmat.fi/tool/)

Example of E-learning material:

“ABC of marketing planning” is an e-learning material espe-cially aimed to help small cultural tourism organisations in mak-ing an effective marketing plan. The e-learning material is al-most ready and will be published both in Finnish and in English at Kulmat.fi platform in July.

The most important things in marketing planning are covered in a short and easy-to-read manner. In the material it is first explained why planning of marketing is crucial. From then on it guides the reader through analysis on to strategic and tacti-cal decisions.Special interest is given to understanding the trends in tour-ism business and to the motivation and possible ways to de-fine and classify the customers. The importance of internet and social media are also emphasized. The aim is to let the reader to reflect the subjects on to the organisation’s own marketing. The material offers a formula for marketing plan and an Excel sheet for action plan as sepa-rate documents to be downloaded. The reader can fill out the documents and after completing the e-learning material they will have a running start for their own marketing and action plan or alternatively an update to the current ones. The content for the e-learning material has been produced by FCG Finnish Consulting Group Oy.Written by Hanna Baas, FCG

Cultural Tourism 2011 in col-laboration with the Capitals of Culture calls to the serv-ice sector to get involved:

Tallinn:From February till September 2011 Cultural Tourism 2011 in collaboration with the Capital of Culture Tallinn 2011 -Founda-tion has started the biggest ever training programme directed to the service sector in Estonia. The programme is build up in three seminars each of four sessions, with the final happening in the autumn of 2011.

The open call was launched publicly in the beginning of the year, to which more than 260 organisations from Shipping com-panies, hotels, taxi, restaurants, museums and public transport companies responded to.

The concept of the training programme was to analyze the meaning of the service profession and to understand the role of the worker in regard of the occupation, looking in the values of it and changing attitude towards the job with motivational examples of everyday. One of the training sessions was organized towards the mid-dle management giving them tools to how also implement good service mentality to young people whom came to work for the companies during the summer seasons. In four month nearly 2000 workers from the partner compa-nies have taken part to the training seminars. The participants

till now have being mainly female of 21-30 years of age. One of the aims of the programme was also to map the prob-lematic parts of the service sector. Some of the biggest lacks were definite: Lack of motivation from management-middle management to the normal employees-, difficulties in com-municating the aims of the organization from the management to the employees, - difficulties in finding right employees for the job.

The used material is going to be included to the e-learning entity.

Turku:Hospitality seminar was organized on 27.4.2011, Cultural Centre Logomo (Köydenpunojankatu 14)The invitation was distributed widely and more than 80 people presenting various service providers, bus and taxi drivers, ho-tel management and reception personal, business personal, etc. were present.

The programme started with dynamic and interesting perform-ance of actress Tuija Piepponen on theme ”Sign language”. Information about cultural capital´s events as well as about other events was given by Lena Kingelin (Turku 2011 Founda-tion) and Teemu Vappula (Turku Touring). The event finished with an interactive question-answer item where participants of the seminar discussed in small groups with the idea to find out how to answer typical touristic ques-tions in Turku.

The material: www.culturaltourism2011.com in CT 2011 workspace (project documents > hospitality seminar 27.4.)

Communication assistant

The project have also hired a new part time worker, communica-tion assistant at Tallinn 2011 Foundation: François Martin

As a communication assistant in the Cultural Tourism 2011 program, I keep an eye on what the international press can say about both our cities and our joint projects update our Face book page with any new and valuable material, also modify when needed all information about CT 2011 products on Tallinn 2011 Foundation website. Besides the social media-oriented tasks, I'm also in charge of organ-izing tour operators' visits in the two cities, releasing newsletters to our partners from Estonia, Finland and Germany as well as to the press, and by doing so informing them on actual tourism industry themes in our cities.

François Martin francois.martin@tallinn2011.ee+372 56 20 11 29 www.tallinn2011.ee/engwww.facebook.com/Cultourism2011

Upcoming events in next autumn:

Joint WP meeting 22.8.2011 in Helsinki•Steering group meeting 23.8.2011 in •TallinnFamtrips for German and Swedish tour •operators in the beginning of September

The project staff wishes for all our cooperators a very beautiful and successful summer! Maritta Hiltunen, Pirjo Saari and Elena Natale and also Janne Lemmetyinen (financial assistant) and François Martin (communication assistant)

More detailed information about Cultural Tourism 2011 – projectMaritta Hiltunen, Cultural Tourism 2011 / Turku Touring , Aurakatu 4, 20100 Turku.

GSM +358 40 168 1955, maritta.hiltunen@turku.fi.www.tallinn2011.ee/eng

www.facebook.com/Cultourism2011

In picture: Maritta Hiltunen, Elena Natale, Pirjo Saari and Lennart Sundja.