Visit Finland
The Power of a Diverse Consultancy Team in Advancing Inclusive Tourism
DEI Consulting | DEI Learning & Development | DEI Communications
Visit Finland's mission is to promote Finland internationally as a sustainable and attractive travel destination and to contribute to the sustainable and international growth of tourism companies and destinations.
Visit Finland has identified inclusion as one of the development areas in the travel sector. They selected deidei as their partner to update their Inclusive Travel materials and train their staff to strengthen diversity, inclusivity, and equity both within Visit Finland and across tourism businesses nationwide.
“Inclusive tourism recognizes that the range of tourists is inherently diverse, and this diversity can continue to grow. We chose deidei as our partner because they brought a concrete, comprehensive approach to inclusion, which covered the tourist, employee, market, and communication perspectives.”
Muoniovaara Hanna
Manager, Supplier Partnerships, Visit Finland
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The core aim of this project was to strengthen tourism operators' inclusion skills as well as understanding of inclusive travel. The project had four phases: participatory background mapping, updating Visit Finland’s materials, training their staff, and supporting external communication.
Supporting Visit Finland to embed DEI into their scalable coaching materials, guidelines and indicators
We started the project with a participatory background mapping, where we collected the necessary data from Visit Finland's client companies and stakeholders through a short questionnaire and background interviews. The data helped us to identify business needs and to prioritize our update work.
As part of the material update, the deidei team further developed several key resources that are part of the Sustainable Travel Finland (STF) program:
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Inclusive Travel Guide
We updated the guide with DEI perspectives in the context of the tourism sector. The old guide had only covered the tourist perspective, so in line with the client's request, the guide was expanded to include workplace and employee perspectives. The diversity of our team allowed us to create concrete measures in the guide, taking into account the different dimensions of diversity such as religion, culture, ethnicity, and sexuality.
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Guidelines and indicators for enterprises
We updated guidelines to match with the developing legislation and the STF development plan criteria to ensure they reflect an inclusive approach. In addition we developed indicators to measure overall inclusion and equity in the tourism sector.
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Scalable coaching materials for stakeholder businesses
Lastly, we created a coaching package for tourism businesses to help them incorporate DEI into their operations. We updated training materials for Visit Finland Academy, addressing tourists and employees as well as internal and external communications. These scalable materials offer practical tools for planning services that cater to diverse needs, including those of sexual and gender minorities, people with disabilities, and individuals from various religious and cultural backgrounds.
The strength of our diverse consultancy team was key in updating these materials inclusively. By combining varied perspectives on diversity, we were able to provide a comprehensive approach to inclusion that incorporated a wide range of diversity dimensions. This approach enabled us to create practical guidelines and tools, ensuring that tourism businesses could apply these principles effectively.
“The diversity within deidei’s expert team was essential for updating the Inclusive Travel Guide. It had to address the needs of various groups of tourists and businesses’ employees, and deidei’s broad expertise helped ensure we met these needs comprehensively.
Kokkarinen Liisa,
Head of Sustainable Development, Visit Finland
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From updating materials to practical steps: DEI trainings and communication consultation
One key component of integrating inclusion and equity in the travel industry was training Visit Finland’s staff on the theme and providing support on external communication. We organized two training sessions for Visit Finland’s staff, equipping them to share this valuable knowledge with tourism businesses across Finland. These sessions focused on how Visit Finland’s resources can help stakeholders and customers, and how implementing DEI strategies can give tourism enterprises a competitive edge.
The hands-on, participatory nature of our training received strong positive feedback: our sessions were recognized as among the best of the year – or by some even as “the best training ever”.
We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Visit Finland, as we know our work — combined with Visit Finland’s national efforts – can help create meaningful, long-lasting impact across the Finnish tourism sector.