8 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
8.2 Recommendations
If Irish people’s image of Finland as a destination does not change into more positive and/or accurate in the future, Finland will still be seen mainly as a far away country with cold weather. These subjective views of Finland could be changed by marketing Finland more in Ireland and by reinforcing the positive images that Irish people already have about Finland such as beautiful scenery/landscape, country that has lots of snow and where you can experience the Northern Lights. According to the results it seems that Finland has still lot to improve in marketing its image as a destination in Ireland.
The main emphasis is on marketing Finland’s positive sides in a believable manner. The positive images that the participants already had should be reinforced by the marketers in the future.
It is also vital that both the negative and non accurate images would be changed into more accurate and positive images. This bachelor’s thesis shows some of the percep-tions and images that Irish people have about Finland as a country and as a tourism destination. It would be worth researching more about Irish people’s perceptions and images in the future.
It would be wise to enable marketers of Finland to study how countries that have good image in the minds of Irish people market themselves in Ireland and perhaps take ideas from them. Another way of changing some of these wrong stereotypes would be by getting more publicity in the media. According to Balza (2006) Finnish Tourist Board markets Finland directly to the travel organisers and through media by journalist trips.
These journalist trips should be introduced more in the Irish media. For example Fin-nish Tourist Board could persuade travel programs such as RTE’s program: “How low can you go” to visit Finland.
Finland should have more publicity in the media and the travel products should be mar-keted more in Ireland. Especially things such as Finnish warm summer, Finland’s trendy and modern capital Helsinki and Tampere and its region would be worth to strengthen.
The main thing is that Finland needs to get more awareness in Ireland in order for the inaccurate and non-existing perceptions to change. This kind of research should be initiated by the Finnish Tourist Board in the future and the results should be analysed carefully and used to design effective marketing strategies to improve the destination image of Finland in the future.
As the Finnish Tourist Board is focussing more in the future on Finland's image as a tourism destination it would be wise able to research more about how destination im-age held by tourists affect the destination choice. It might be worth of studying percep-tions more in the future to really assess how much for example Finland’s location in the north affects people’s perception of Finland as a tourism destination. Future studies in this field could also be on destination image. The Finnish Tourist Board should study more about Finland’s destination image. The results should be analysed with the images marketed by the Finnish Tourist Board about Finland. If the perceived and marketed images do not match, marketers should plan a strategy to move these images closer to together. As we learned earlier perceptions and images of a destination have a huge impact on the tourism demand. Marketers should remember that destinations with posi-tive images are chosen.
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QUESTIONNAIRE
1. What nationality are you?
2. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word “Finland”?
3. Do you know the capital of Finland?
4. Have you visited Finland?
a) No (Go to Q5)
b) Yes, where and when?
c) Why did you choose to go there?
d) How would you describe your holiday?
5. Would you consider going to Finland for a holiday?
a) Yes, because b) No, because
6. How would you describe Finland as a tourism destination?
7. Which of these travel products related to Finland sounds most appealing to you?
a) Winter holiday in Finland b) Weekend trip to Helsinki b) Summer holiday in Finland d) Christmas holiday in Finland 8. Justify your choice?
9. Sex
a) Male b) Female 10. Age category
a) 15 to 24 b) 25 to 39 c) 40 to 55 d) 56 to 69 e) 70 or older 11. Occupation?
SEMI-STRUCTURED TOPIC INTERVIEW
1. Finland in the Irish Markets
- How is Finland marketed in Ireland?.
- What are the main products that Finland is promoting in Ireland?
- How were they chosen?
2. Future of Finland in Ireland
- How would you see the future of Finland in the Irish market?
- Would you see Ireland becoming a potential outbound country in the future for Finland?
- Why is that?
3. Irish peoples image and perception of Finland
- How would you as a product manager of the Finnish Tourist Board describe perceptions of Irish person of Finland as Tourism Destination?
- How easily do you think perceptions would be changeable?
- Would you see Ireland becoming a potential outbound country in the future for Finland?
- Why is that?