Latvia as a Summer Festival Destination to Finnish Tourists
Balode, Kristine (2016)
Balode, Kristine
Laurea-ammattikorkeakoulu
2016
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201601181399
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201601181399
Tiivistelmä
The subject of the Bachelor’s thesis is Latvia as a Summer Festival Destination to Finnish tourists. The aim of this thesis is to find out if Latvia is known for its summer Festivals and how to improve their marketing. Marketing, social media and mobile applications are important promotion for the festivals. Three of the biggest and well known Latvian summer festivals were chosen as Positivus, Summer Sound and Laba Daba. All of the festivals offer wide range of local and international artists as well as there are many different sports, entertaining, creative activities. All three festivals are longer than one day, which lead to consider what kind of amenities festival can offer.
The theoretical framework includes destination management, tourism in a nutshell, event tourism, marketing and e-commerce, as well as basic facts and history about Latvia and Finland. Each of the chosen summer festivals have been described. Tourism in general is a wide concept, a few definitions have been given and one of the tourism niche – event tourism – social, economic, environmental, cultural well-being on society has been discussed.
In the empirical part a survey has been conducted. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in the survey. The questionnaire was available online and only Finnish respondents took part in the survey as their opinion was the most important. The theory of the research methods have been explained at the beginning of the chapter as well as an analysis of the survey has been given at the end.
According to the results of the survey Latvia is not known for its summer festivals to Finnish tourists, in fact most of the respondents do not know much about Latvia as a country itself. The biggest reason is lack of marketing. As technologies develop fast, festivals should be marketed more on the social media, namely Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In the survey, respondents mentioned that visual marketing is very important if one wants to attract visitors, which proves that responsible person should pay bigger attention to the design and structure of the webpages. In the conclusion suggestions have been given off what should be improved on the festival webpages as well as suggestions of how Finnish tourists in easier and more convenient way could visit Latvian festivals and see the country itself.
The theoretical framework includes destination management, tourism in a nutshell, event tourism, marketing and e-commerce, as well as basic facts and history about Latvia and Finland. Each of the chosen summer festivals have been described. Tourism in general is a wide concept, a few definitions have been given and one of the tourism niche – event tourism – social, economic, environmental, cultural well-being on society has been discussed.
In the empirical part a survey has been conducted. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in the survey. The questionnaire was available online and only Finnish respondents took part in the survey as their opinion was the most important. The theory of the research methods have been explained at the beginning of the chapter as well as an analysis of the survey has been given at the end.
According to the results of the survey Latvia is not known for its summer festivals to Finnish tourists, in fact most of the respondents do not know much about Latvia as a country itself. The biggest reason is lack of marketing. As technologies develop fast, festivals should be marketed more on the social media, namely Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In the survey, respondents mentioned that visual marketing is very important if one wants to attract visitors, which proves that responsible person should pay bigger attention to the design and structure of the webpages. In the conclusion suggestions have been given off what should be improved on the festival webpages as well as suggestions of how Finnish tourists in easier and more convenient way could visit Latvian festivals and see the country itself.