Funded Projects 2014-2020

Project ARCTISEN

Project Acronym	ARCTISEN
Project Title	Culturally Sensitive Tourism in the Arctic
Project subsite	ARCTISEN

Summary

The project ‘Culturally Sensitive Tourism in the Arctic’ – ARCTISEN – develops a support system for start-ups and existing small and medium-sized enterprises offering innovative tourism products and services. Expanding tourist interest in the Arctic brings unforeseen opportunities to maintain local livelihoods and lifestyles. The project partners in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada and Denmark/Greenland highlight the pressing demand for new tourism products and services that draw on the rich natural and cultural resources of the region. Simultaneously, limited knowledge of indigenous and other local cultures in Northern communities calls for more open and sensitive dialogue among different tourism actors. The transnational cooperation among project partners produces a support system that consists of the following three components: 1) toolkits and online courses that enhance tourism companies cultural sensitivity, digital, product development and business innovation capacities, 2) cluster of culturally sensitive tourism enterprises across the programme area, 3) co-creation of new tourism products, services and business innovations. The project introduces sensitivity as a core value that guides the project activities from benchmarking to test visits, workshops to online courses. These activities will help tourism start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises to turn their place-based opportunities into economically viable tourism businesses. The novelty of ARCTISEN lies in enabling and supporting entrepreneurs to craft culturally sensitive tourism products in close cooperation with a wide range of tourism practitioners and scholars across the programme area. Through transnational tourism cluster, the project contributes to a more positive business climate for tourism companies – and to making the participating regions more economically robust and versatile in general.

Objectives

ARCTISEN’s approach in addressing the abovementioned challenges is to enhance transnational cooperation among a wide range of tourism stakeholders in the project area to support sustainable local tourism business development, economic diversity, self-determination and maintaining and recovering of cultural livelihoods. The support system in the making will enable tourism start-ups and existing SMEs to learn from each other and to take advantage of expertise offered by scholars and practitioners specialized in culturally sensitive development of tourism business. Cultural sensitivity is a new concept in tourism development and the novelty of ARCTISEN lies in it. It is exactly what is needed when utilising Northern Indigenous and other local cultural resources in tourism business. It enhances stakeholders’ self-determination, intra- and intercultural understanding, respect, empowerment and inclusion together with economic development solutions. The project adapts many exisiting tools of tourism development, such as toolkits, benchmarking, workshops and co-creation, to a new thing: developing culturally sensitive tourism business. The project builds on existing best practices and business solutions, such as, cultural certification system SápmiExperience in Sweden and a culturally sustainable marketing approach in Greenland. What is also new is that instead of developing Sámi tourism in one country or between the Scandinavian countries and Russia, also other Indigenous peoples are included in the project in order to learn from their experiences and practises. At the same time, new cooperation and networks will be built together to support the development of culturally sensitive tourism business in all project countries.

Impacts

Tangible

Improved competitiveness:	For tourism-oriented SMEs, the project has prepared several useful toolkits, focusing on improving the understanding of cultural sensitivity in the NPA, inspiration for developing culturally sensitive tourism products/services (product cards, videos, learning from benchmarking trips).

Improved competitiveness:

For tourism-oriented SMEs, the project has prepared several useful toolkits, focusing on improving the understanding of cultural sensitivity in the NPA, inspiration for developing culturally sensitive tourism products/services (product cards, videos, learning from benchmarking trips).

Intangible

Influencing policies:	Project outputs were presented to policy-makers in several occasions ranging from local to international level. A good example is the project participation as a panelist in the EU Arctic Forum in Brussels. The project provided also new insights and connections to the Sámi Parliament in Finland for its tourism policy work.
Raising awareness:	The project raised awareness of the importance of cultural sensitivity in tourism development in the Arctic. For example, in Greenland, the term 'cultural sensitivity' was unknown and even contested at the beginning of the project. Through the various project activities, it became increasingly acknowledged as an issue to be aware of. Also, in Finland and Sweden tourism stakeholders are now more aware of the concept and have started using it. The online course participants reported that the courses changed their behaviour (e.g., make their marketing more responsible and respectful, collaborate with locals and consider their needs). To introduce the concept of cultural sensitivity to tourists, the project developed a quiz, videos, and a Map of Guidelines nicely summarizing the recommendations for different Arctic regions.

Influencing policies:

Project outputs were presented to policy-makers in several occasions ranging from local to international level. A good example is the project participation as a panelist in the EU Arctic Forum in Brussels. The project provided also new insights and connections to the Sámi Parliament in Finland for its tourism policy work.

Raising awareness:

The project raised awareness of the importance of cultural sensitivity in tourism development in the Arctic. For example, in Greenland, the term 'cultural sensitivity' was unknown and even contested at the beginning of the project. Through the various project activities, it became increasingly acknowledged as an issue to be aware of. Also, in Finland and Sweden tourism stakeholders are now more aware of the concept and have started using it. The online course participants reported that the courses changed their behaviour (e.g., make their marketing more responsible and respectful, collaborate with locals and consider their needs). To introduce the concept of cultural sensitivity to tourists, the project developed a quiz, videos, and a Map of Guidelines nicely summarizing the recommendations for different Arctic regions.

Lead Partner

University of Lapland
Finland
Monika Luthje
e-mail: monika.luthje@ulapland.fi

Project Info

Theme
Business development, trade, marketing

Priority
2 Entrepreneurship

Objective
2.1 Improved support systems for SMEs

Project duration
01-10-18 to 30-09-21

Total budget
1 455 547 EUR

NPA co-financing
876 400 EUR

Target groups
local public authority
regional public authority
national public authority
interest groups including NGOs
higher education and research
education/training centre and school
enterprise, including SME
business support organisation
General public

Joint Secretariat Desk Officer
Christopher Parker