Nepal as a destination for Finnish travelers - Service Design

Abstract

Destination marketing is an important tool to attract travellers to the destination in this fast growing economic sector of tourism industry. The main factor which should be considered during destination marketing is customer environment where the customer experience, product and prices act as the value cluster for the traveller. The second factor includes competitor environment where destination should keep itself most popular among its competitor destinations to attract a significant share of travellers. Thirdly, the economic environment should be dealt through strategic plan and agendas around alternative economic scenarios. Lastly, the technological environment should be considered, which includes website, social media, blogging, virtual visits, social networking and web communities. As travellers tend to use social media to discover destinations it is important to understand the role and importance of technology in the modern era of tourism.

During the research, Nepal was taken as the destination marketing point for Finnish travellers. Different tourism websites and blogs were used to study recent trends in the tourism sector global-ly. Service design methods were used in the research process, which includes personas, customer journey map, customer journey experience and benchmarking. The final product of the research was a business card.

The research revealed that Finnish people are interested to travel to Nepal. The research shows that easy accessibility of air transport, transportation and accommodation facility inside the country greatly influence the decision making of many travellers from Finland. The thesis also makes rec-ommendations regarding aspects which should be improved in order to attract more tourists in Nepal, which are mainly related to advertisement promotion in global market and the availability of direct and cheaper flights. The research developed a leaflet for the promotion and branding of the Nepalese tourism sector, which can also be helpful for tourism business and tourism.