How to Turn Around a Region?

My story in East-Estonia, one of the least developed, and mostly Russian speaking regions in Estonia started in 2014 when I received a phone call from a former student asking me to help them to increase the number of tourists.

"We want to reach 1 000 000 nights spent by 2020," he stated.

"How many nights do you have now?" I asked.

"350 000, and we want to become the second biggest region in tourism in Estonia after Tallinn," he added.

It is impossible, but let's make a try. Before that, we had experience in how to launch big tourist attractions like Seaplane Harbour in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia that during the first year had 320 000 visitors and Tallinn TV tower with 240 000 visitors during a year after opening.

Background

East-Estonia had planted some seeds for future success: had created a local tourism cluster consisting of local governments and private sector accommodations and other players. And also created a Facebook page for the fans of East-Estonia. They had also a strategy and defined packages for tourists, a habit of exhibiting at the biggest tourism fairs.

The biggest challenge at that time was that they were mostly in the news with the only negative: the local crimes, accidents, HIV, drugs, high unemployment, low salaries, miners made redundant, conflicts, etc. It was unofficially called a region of catastrophe.

In 2014 when Ukraine made the headlines in world media about the Donbas war, Estonians started to fear that the mostly Russian speaking region largely influenced by Russian media will be the next target.

Positioning

We on the other side started to ask our guests from Estonia, and neighboring countries of Russia, and Finland why did they decide to spend their holidays in East-Estonia. Estonians told that they came because it was adventurous, Russians mostly from St Petersburg, 135 km from the border of East-Estonia told that they are looking for silence and stress of and there were so few Finns that we did not get any good picture about them.

Talking with the partners of the cluster, there were to groups: some strongly liking to focus on adventures and the others, like big spas, strongly opposing the idea.

Until 2017 the picture had cleared: spas understood that it is difficult to compete without destination having a strong focus and agreed to focus on adventures as the umbrella message.

The Proof

It was good news, but we needed a stronger proof before focusing the communication on adventures. There were three important moments of truth we had to face. First, do we really have enough services that can be called adventures? Second, would the outsiders believe that the adventures are adventurous enough? Third, would the local people accept it?

At the beginning of 2017, we gathered in Alutaguse and one of the tasks was to list all the services that are adventurous in East-Estonia. We had agreed that if we can have at least 50-60 of them, not would probably be enough to proudly call the destination Region of Adventures. We ended up with 250!

Then we asked a group of travel journalists to visit the region to try different adventures. We knew it was critical: if they like and become fond of the region, it is a good proof. On the other side, if they say its nothing special, we will not have another chance.

During the event, I received a phone call from the press tour organizer who told me that everyone was fascinated about the region and the adventurous services. He told me that the photographers were like kids in the candy store, just not getting enough of the amazing angles and views.

And then the angle of local people: we received comments from the young people who had been growing up in the region and really loved it. They were in tears telling us how happy and proud they were that we positioned the region as full of adventures: they had known that it had been always true!

First Steps

The first pilot into the marketing and communication took place in 2016 when the region piloted an integrated campaign for the first time. It did show that there was some impact on increasing nights spend in East-Estonia. It also created an understanding that it would be possible to use communication as a tool to move towards 1 000 000 nights.

We started gradually in 2017 with different campaigns and adopted a more systematic approach from the end of the year. Based on a clear understanding of different target groups and markets we created teams for marketing in Finland and in Russia in addition to the team in Estonia.

The major push into communication started end of 2017 with EU co-funding. 45 campaigns during the 2,5 years to attract tens of thousands of people to the region. We were expecting several new attractions to be opened: Kivi?li Adventure Center for kids, Aidu Water center, Purtse museum, Kreenholm Textile museum in Narva, Sillam?e Sea Promenade and Coast Promenade, new expo in Narva Museum and others to support the planned growth of tourists.

Estonia

In Estonia the majority of work was done: different target groups and different strategies. We were reaching as high visibility as possible with our limited means and pushing partners to create new adventures for campaigns to present the region. Every year we had an annual competition for the best new adventure and many of the most interesting new adventures originated from there. Sillam?e museum, a really tiny one in the middle of the formerly closed city Sillam?e was the first winner with a game introducing the city that was used to film an Estonian movie. The second winner was the Vaivara museum, a couple of kilometers from Narva presenting the time travel of Estonians deportation to Siberia at the beginning of Soviet occupation. The third one was a sauna experience in Lammasm?e, at the western border of the region. In addition, tens of new adventures were created to expose the region to visitors in a different way and give them reasons to come also during the low seasons.

Russia

As Narva is the border town it was apparent why Russia was selected as a target market. Of course many of the people from St Peterburg new Narva and Narva-J?esuu as a wonderful resort and Estonian Blue lagune with 14 km of white sand beach, they did not know that there are so many adventures to try nearby. Positioning it as an adventurous region was the first task.

With our extremely limited budget, our agency did a huge job bringing tens of influencers and journalists to the region and creating more than 30M contacts and managed our presence in the local social media.

Finland

Finland was the most challenging market with no awareness of the region at all. Very few of the Finns had visited the area, most had visited the capital of Estonia Tallinn, P?rnu in the western part of Estonia and the Estonian biggest island Saaremaa. We tackled the market from different perspectives: creating our own presence in social media and a blog, joined forces with local Finns helping to attract and guide Finnish journalists in East-Estonia and cooperated with the Embassy of Finland.

Step by step we created interest toward the region so that finally all the major media channels had covered East-Estonia at least once. During the last international travel fair in Helsinki, East-Estonia was one of their hidden gems that helped to generate additional interest toward the county. Finally, also Finnish travel agencies started to show some interest.

Cluster members realized that there was a big lack of Finnish speaking guides and hotel administration staff and started to arrange language courses. For instance, one former miner in the Mining Museum learned Finnish well enough to guide underground tours.

Backlashes

We started with the campaigns as planned reaching families, empty nesters, camp organizers, schools. And we quickly realized that the best campaigns we could afford brought almost no direct sales increase. The new adventurous services we expected to be developed by cluster members several times per year were not realistic. The target group of camp organizers that seemed to have a big potential, was too loyal for their current service providers and did not show any interest to change.

And on top of that, even if many of the partners understood the logic of planned campaigns, it was difficult to convince them as it was so different from what they have been used to.

The biggest fight during the 3 years was to change the understanding of how to participate in fairs. The tourism fairs we participated at were not the places for immediate heavily discounted sales for the follow-up weekends but had to be used to collect contacts from people interested in the area. Their interest in the adventurous region should be fostered later by the newsletters and follow up communication.

As it took for some time when the nights spent in East Estonia started to pick up, the first marketing meetings were about a lot of stress and complains. It seemed not working at all and we did not have any experience telling how long they had to wait for the visible results.

Results Picking Up

Even when we saw the first increase, it did not create much of positivity as most of the small partners present during the meetings did not see any difference. But there was one comment that made me happy: "We do not see visitors growth, bust we see a lot of event managers wanting to produce festivals, concerts, and events here." And then we understood that if the region is cool and trustful enough they will come and bring thousands of people along.

Almost at the same time, Estonian President decided to spend a month in Narva working there that brought Narva and East-Estonia to the headlines. And not once, but several times making people realize that East-Estonia is really part of Estonia and encouraged to visit it. But during that time another good idea born. Narva wanted to run for the title of European Cultural Capital for 2024.

It seemed impossible, but shortly become an idea that united the young and the old, the cultural and not cultural, locals and non-locals and despite the political confusion in the middle of the process, an excellent bid was put together. #NarvaIsNext had suddenly turned from fear to hope.

And in the background, the cluster members enjoyed monthly increasing tourist numbers compared to the previous years. Our campaigns focused on non-touristic seasons filled first school holidays, then weekends and also more and more places during the weeks. And the summer season visitors increased as well.

The Results in Numbers

At the project end, we are happy that we have built a working system to promote East-Estonia. 45 campaigns resulted in the visibility of 13,5M in Estonia, 31M in Russia and 4,3 M in Finland, we created a database of 13 000 persons interested in the region, hosted more than 60 journalists and influencers from Finland and Russia, promoted 155 adventures in the region.

The results: the growth of the nights spent in the region was 207 000 and additional revenue in accommodations 6,4M €. Every invested euro brought 24,1€ to the accommodations.

But there is much more...

Yes, there is much more than numbers, it is the people. The people in tourism cluster who have grown the region from the black swan into the beautiful white one. The pride of being role models for other destinations in Estonia, sharing the story and experience to the other regions, the courage to launch ventures and invest into new sites, the happiness of feeling that it is really possible to turn around a region if you really want and are focused on the one goal.

Where are the 1 000 000 spent nights?

Today we are half the way, reaching ca 500 000 in 2019. If the growth continues with the same speed, a million will be reachable by 2030. Yes, it is 10 years later, but the growth has to be manageable, have we learned by now. The region has only 69 accommodations with 1582 rooms and 3795 beds and it just cannot fit the million nights today. As during recent years the investors have seen the growth they are also more willing to invest in new sites.

We have learned also that growth has to be managed by the people. The small SME-s with just 1-2 employees in the adventure sector have to manage the growth in service delivery, but also dare to employ new persons. Otherwise, they are just full booked with their everyday growing business and burn out quickly. We have to focus more on capacity building by attracting new people into the tourism sector and educating the local young people to make the entrance into the tourism and hospitality industry smoother.

We have to engage more local people into the success making them understand why tourism is important and how can local government support. All the schoolchildren need to know the importance and success of the tourism sector in order to see it as one of their future career opportunities.

We need to work more with public transportation to make the hotels and attractions reachable without an own car needed. And so on, and so on.

There is still a lot to do, but the starting point is a bit different. With success numbers in hand, trust is much higher.

Thank you, East-Estonia for the great adventure!