Boost to the rural tourism services in Eastern Finland

Tourism engagement: co-creating well -being. Proceedings of the 6th Advances in Tourism Marketing Conference 299 Boost to the Rural Tourism Services in Eastern Finland Ilona Sares University of Lapland Rovaniemi, Finland ilona.sares@gmail.fi PhD Hilkka Lassila Savonia University of Applied Sciences Professor Satu Miettinen University of Lapland Introduction Tourism as an industrial sector is growing strongly and influencing to tourists as well as to the developing of tourism sites. The tourism product is usually described as a service package, which consists of several service modules, such as accommodation, transportation and different kind of activi ties. These products are typically experience - centric services, which are designed to engage customers emotionally, physically, intellectually or even spiritually experiences (Shaw, Bailey & Williams 2011). Usually the developers of tourism products focus on the technical properties of the product rather than the experiences of the customers (Komppula 2005). Nowadays tourists are seeking sustainable tourist services, which give them memorable experiences and wellbeing. Pure nature in rural area in Finland w ill be the good environment to produce this kind of tourist products. We need new ways to approach developing process when creating tourism products in Eastern Finland. Today turism business doesn’t co - operate regularly with other sectors in rural areas wh en offering services to tourists. Customer satisfaction is the key element in evaluating process of services. The producer has to know what are the key elements to build excellent tourism products for customers. Could creative tourism and service design gi ve answers when we create and develop tourism products? The aim of this paper is to show the structure of tourism products by using the model of Smith (1997) and applying it to develop tourism product in Finnish rural area. The other aim is to discuss about the role of creative tourism when developing tourism p roducts. This paper is discussing creative tourism production where the user orientatio n and engagement are essential. The model will be applied ongoing service and product development project "Internationalizing the local food producers". Theoretical fram ework is constructed from the thematic of creative tourism and service design applied in tourism production. The data has been using this theoretical framework.