Arctic Design Week as an attractive tourism product

Cultural tourism and cultural events are part of the development projects of the Finnish tourism sector, which aims to increase the attractiveness of Finland as a tourist destination. Especially more diverse utilizing of Finnish design in the development of tourist attractions are seen as a possibility. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the opportunities of the Arctic Design Week event as an attractive tourism product. The research subject is approached from the perspective of the customer and customer value and the starting point has been the event visitor’s experiences. Research data consists of 11 essays of written event experiences, seven short interviews, participatory observation and two blog posts. Theoretical background forms from three theories. For analyzing event experiences I will use Michael Morgan’s (2008) Prism Model of Event Experience as a base and theory guided content analysis will be used for analyzing the whole data. For the product development, my perspective will be co-creation theory and the findings of the analysis will be adapted to Komppula & Boxberg’s (2002) model of the customer-oriented tourism product. The results show that customer value in the events was generated through social interaction, by creating suitable conditions for the event, providing opportunities to learn new things, get new experiences, opportunities to participate in the production of the event itself and making the event accessible with clear signs and information. Based on the theoretical framework and the results of my research I have established a model that describes the event as a tourism product. The event tourism product consists of the event system, event process, event space and the event concept. The event tourism product is born in the encounters and interaction between the organizers of the event, customers and stakeholders, before the event, during the event and after the event. The customer value forms in this whole process. The outlined event tourism product gives the direction on how the events could be developed in order to attract tourists