For many years Haaga-Helia’s Porvoo campus and NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences have had a successful co-operation learning from each other. Through student and staff exchange our networking, language and intercultural competences have improved.

Staff members have shared lectures and workshops, taken part in a work rotation and symposiums in the partner university. Similarly, the students have had the advantage of hosting study visits and taking part in study tours.

Benchmarking world heritage sites

In October 2022, the students attending Haaga-Helia’s sustainable nature tourism course travelled to the Netherlands. The aim of the visit and the course project was to develop and come up with sustainable nature tourism experiences for the Kvarken archipelago.

Together with tourism management students at NHL Stenden our students arranged a poster presentation about the tourism services in the Kvarken archipelago world heritage site and participated in a hub session about tourism stakeholder mapping. The students experienced company visits and a benchmark of tourism services on the beautiful island of Ameland, a part of the Wadden sea world heritage site. Both Kvarken and Wadden are natural and transboundary world heritage sites.

Learnings to bring home

Cycling around on Ameland gave the students the idea of enhancing the role of bike rentals and bike tours provided by locals also in the Kvarken archipelago. Furthermore, the students excitedly innovated various digital travel guides, sub board rentals, treasure hunts and all-in-one winter experiences to fight the problem of seasonality.

According to the feedback our students learned about Finland as a tourist destination, with its target markets and USPs, to create memorable nature experiences in tourism. They learned about the Kvarken archipelago and Ameland, and the concept of world heritage sites. The students found the visits to these sites a good way to learn about both positive and negative aspects of the destinations and how to apply the knowledge to other sites and attractions. Some found giving the poster presentations in English rewarding, too.

Sharing insights and cooperating with the Dutch students was rewarding. Also appreciated was the peek into student life and studies in the Netherlands. The value of international networks is well understood by our students.

All in all, having a continuing and fruitful relationship with a partner institution makes sharing best practices and learning from each other effective, effortless and enjoyable. At Haaga-Helia’s Porvoo campus we look forward to receiving Dutch visitors again this spring of 2023.

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