The project focuses on strengthening the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to innovate by creating new data-driven services and collaboration methods. The aim is for the tourism industry to be able to offer visitors more accurate and attractive experiences.
An important part of the project is also to make the tourism industry more sustainable by identifying and clustering its development needs via a digital platform. These needs are then linked to companies and start-ups that can offer or develop suitable solutions.
Pernilla Bredberg, business developer and project manager for Visit Värmland, explains: “It is generally challenging for smaller companies in the tourism industry to develop their own sustainable and attractive services. Our hypothesis is that individual businesses in the tourism industry share challenges with each other and by collecting data from the need owners on a digital platform, the challenges can be solved jointly.”
Pernilla Bredberg, business developer Visit Värmland, in the picture on the front row to the right together with parts of the project group and partners.
The platform is currently being developed and during the year a soft launch will begin by connecting the tourism industry to input their needs. At the same time, the platform will be available to startups and companies to solve the common challenges of the tourism industry.
Pernilla gives the example of finding solutions such as a digital and interactive training tool for the hospitality industry’s staff that is adapted to the business, or opportunities for accommodation facilities to reduce the visitor’s energy consumption during their visit.
Anders Solberg, Innovation Manager and project leader of the initiative, adds: “The digital platform combined with the collaborative model is unique and likely scalable to more regions. We hope that many people will want to take advantage of this business opportunity and strengthen the tourism industry at the same time.”
Anders Solberg, Innovation Manager Compare.
Karlstad University is also a project partner and is helping to develop the tourism industry so that more people stay longer in Värmland. Here you can read about the AI tool being developed to solve this.
About the project
The project is led by Visit Värmland in collaboration with Compare and Karlstad University through the Centre for Service Research (CTF). Funding comes from the European Regional Development Fund and the project is part of the Academy for Smart Specialisation, a strategic partnership between Compare and Region Värmland.
