Sustainable Tourism Development

A sustainable tourism development project was an interregional project to develop a model for sustainable tourism business development for SMEs in rural areas.

Objectives

The aim was to deepen the understanding of the consumer behavior of the customers for rural tourism. In addition, the present state of the social and ecological sustainability in small rural tourism enterprises was being investigated. As a result, a model for sustainable tourism business development for those types of enterprises was developed.

Results

Outputs of the project:

• Present state analysis of the social and ecological sustainability for the tourism business
• Publication of the customer survey results
• Development process and the regional variations with three categories (accessibility, cultural sustainability and ecological sustainability)

Target group

Micro enterprises and their customers were the target group and implementation of the project focused on four regions: Central Finland, Ostrobothnia, Southern Ostrobothnia and the Tampere region.

Period of implementation

The time for the implementation is 1.12.2010 - 29.2.2012

Budget and financing

The budget for the project is 248,809 €. The project is funded by the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund through the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for Central Finland (ELY).

Partners

The partners of the project are:

• Tampere University of Applied Sciences
• Vaasa University of Applied Sciences
• University of Helsinki/ Ruralia Institute Seinäjoki

More information

Ms Petra Blinnikka, Project Manager
+ 358 40 539 9185, firstname.lastname@jamk.fi
JAMK University of Applied Sciences, School of Business and Services Management