Footprints of Defence in the Archipelago

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The Baltic Sea archipelago of Stockholm, Åland and Turku is known as a nature tourism area. However, accessibility is still considered to be weak, cultural heritage, insular way of life and digital technology have not been utilized enough when creating valuable experiences for visitors during pre-, on-site and post-visit phases. Other challenges are low co-operation across borders and shortages in service chains. The overall objective is to develop existing, though almost untapped defence historical resources of Gålö seal farm, Bomarsund fortress, southern cape of Örö and Korpoström into appealing and sustainable destinations by increasing the awareness and experience value. There are three sub-objectives: 1. the experience value will be improved by creating story-rich and informative digital content to illustrate the destinations, 2. the development will be supported by resolving shortages in infrastructure, supply chain and overall attraction management, 3. the aspects of cultural, ecological, economic and social sustainability in insular tourism are analyzed, and embedded in the actions and outputs of the project in order to increase the understanding of sustainability among visitors, locals, companies, tourism developers and public actors. The project develops digital outputs for marketing and enrichment of visits, accessibility solutions, especially environmentally and culturally sustainable solutions, cross-border archipelago heritage tour suggestions, improved service chains, multidisciplinary development methods and e.g. joint virtual publication summarizing the best practices. In the end the four attractions will form a themed tourism attraction highlighting the history especially from the defence point of view. Improved accessibility and experience value have increased the number of visits, length of stay and tourism expenditure to revitalize business opportunities. Jointly developed solutions are also transferred to other insular destinations.

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