The strategic plan of tourism is the joint plan and situational awareness of the whole destination in the tourism industry. They give a guideline for the development of the next five years. The strategy combines Hanko destination with the joint vision and targets.
Visit Hanko is responsible for creating the strategy, follow-up and implementation. In addition to the strategic plan Visit Hanko compiles an annual action plan.
The strategic plan of tourism defines Visit Hanko’s tasks, values, targets groups and strategic key areas.
How was the strategy created?
The strategic plan of tourism was implemented together with the project called Digi + Hiiletön 2
(Digi + Carbonfree 2). The focus in the process was to activate the local businesses to participate in a more profound way. The goal was to build a strategy that is based on current data and views and experiences in area of development.
At the core of the development were three workshops, which were attended by 15 participants on average. There was a strong dialogue and the strength and challenges were acknowledged. The focus was to outline the joint priorities of the development work for the future years. The workshops were planned in order to enable participants to come up with concrete ideas of services,
target customer groups and strengthening the competitiveness. In addition to the workshops there was a preliminary questionnaire, where opinions, views and areas for development were gathered.
As a foundation of the strategy work several reliable sources of information that complement each other. The official statistics from company Visitory offers a comprehensive assessment of the flow of tourists, seasonal fluctuations and target groups. Visit Hanko carried out a visitor survery deepened the understanding of the tourists’ needs, expectations and behaviour. Also the previous strategy of tourism for the destination was reviewed and the analysis helped to recognise the successes and the areas for development. The material provided by Visit Finland and trend reviews gave a national and international perspective. With the help of that it is easier to make the strategy to meet the need of the demand in the future, the targets of sustainability and changing competitive environment.
As a whole the strategy process combined the data and experiential knowledge and national guidelines of local actors. This ensured that the new strategic plan of tourism is built on strong multivoiced basis that looks into the future. It also reflects genuinely the joint willingness to develop the tourism by local actors.
