Visitor experience in Helsinki
The City of Helsinki has taken a systematic approach to managing visitor experience. The aim of the work is to identify the relevant visitor profiles, customer paths and overall visitor experience in the city. Visitor experience management and data monitoring will improve the impact and significance of tourism and events in the City's strategic plans and development measures.
The visitor experience encompasses all aspects of a visitor’s visit to a destination, influenced by many different factors such as the tourist attractions, cultural life, food culture, accommodation, transport convenience and safety. It can also be seen as consisting of different phases over time.
The visitor experience starts before the visit, when the visitor dreams about the visit, plans their visit, explores the destination and makes reservations. It is important that visitors have easy access to information about local attractions, services and other important information, such as transport links and events. This will make it easier for the visitor to decide to visit the destination in the first place. Together with stakeholders, Helsinki developed its own concept for the visitor experience management model in 2023 (pdf, in Finnish). We launched destination-level visitor experience measurement(Link leads to external service) in connection with the concept in the same year, which will help us to understand the current visitor experience and, alongside continuous improvement, to initiate the necessary development measures in cooperation with public and private operators to address potential shortcomings.
In addition to our own visitor experience collection scheme, we monitor a data platform that combines spatial data, sentiment analysis and market data into one clear overall picture of what is happening in an area or destination – in both the physical and digital world.
Based on the collected and monitored data, the visitor experience in Helsinki is at a good level. Members of the Helsingin tekijät partnership network will be able to view visitor experience data from the DataLokki – Helsinki Destination Insights service(Link leads to external service) using their member IDs. You can join the Helsingin tekijät (Makers of Helsinki) partnership network today!
Tourism and Events Master Plan 2035
Sustainable and vibrant tourism and events are cornerstones of Helsinki's development. Helsinki has achieved its goal of being the most sustainable tourist destination in the world. Thanks to many positive starting points, Helsinki continues to grow and develop as a diverse and vibrant city for tourism and events. To enable sustainable growth, a comprehensive, land-use-focused Master Plan has been prepared, identifying Helsinki's current tourism and events priorities and future development directions.
The starting point has been the current land use situation and the development opportunities it creates, as well as the trends that will guide tourism and event industries going forward. The plan was developed for the long term, so the effects of the different trends and growth scenarios have been taken into account in the development plan and vision. This work will be used to define future strategic objectives for the development of tourism and events. It will also be taken into account in the updated City Plan Implementation Programme and in future land use plans and implementation. The Master Plan is also a good planning and decision-making tool for operators and investors in the tourism and events industry.
Tourism and Events Master Plan 2035 (in Finnish)(Link leads to external service)
Tourist bus services
The demand for tourist bus services has grown in recent years due to the tourism growth. The Tourist Bus Service Development Plan (pdf, in Finnish) has been prepared for Helsinki’s tourist bus services. It includes a comprehensive examination of the current situation, identification of development needs and solutions proposals, such as international mapping. The objective of the development is to provide tourists with easy alternative modes of transport to explore the city and ensure smooth tourist bus services for the appropriate target groups to see Helsinki.
See also the stops and parking places for tourist buses in Helsinki in 2023.
Public toilets
The need for new public toilets has been identified. The number of public toilets has already been increased and more are on the way. Sibelius Park, for example, has a new public toilet in addition to the old one. Cleaning of the public toilets at Sibelius Park has been increased during the summer season due to the high number of users. More information on the development of public toilets can be read in Jukka Punamäki's blog post Tourism and Toilets 2020(Link leads to external service) (in Finnish).
Guidance
In the City Guidance Ecosystem project, Helsinki, Tampere and Turku developed their guidance together with companies and interest groups through a shared innovation platform. The project ended in 2019 and resulted in the concept of smart city guidance and the joint city guidance handbook for the 6Aika cities. The new Smart City Guidance in Helsinki project was launched in 2021.