Projects
We are constantly developing food tourism in Finland – take a look at our projects on this page.
Increasing the Attractiveness of Sparsely Populated Areas by Developing Storytelling and Food Tourism
The HOHA project helps food tourism entrepreneurs in sparsely populated areas to develop saleable food tourism experiences through storytelling.
Objectives of the HOHA project
The aim of the project is to develop new storytelling concepts and food tourism products, which will be used to build a user-friendly guide that is tailored to serve food tourism operators in sparsely populated areas. Concept-creation and piloting will be developed in collaborative workshops that build and strengthen the area’s cooperation networks between food tourism operators and residents of the region.
The goals of the project are
- Increase the attractiveness of the target region with food tourism products enhanced with storytelling produced in a collaborative workshop series
- Bring up nearly forgotten cultural capital and store it in service concepts
- To integrate local food as part of the services provided by local food tourism operators
- Strengthen the communication competence skills of local companies to increase awareness
- To create a user-friendly and approachable storytelling guide
- Build a co-operation network through collaborative workshops aimed at developing food tourism in the region.
Hungry for Finland – Building a Functional Ecosystem
The aim of the Hungry for Finland – Building a Functional Ecosystem project is to make Finnish food tourism products more experience-based and sustainable through the development of food tourism networks and competencies.
Food tourism is one of the key themes to be developed in the Finnish tourism strategy. According to the strategy, there is a need for cooperation between operators, development of new food tourism products and increasing know-how. Food and food tourism is the only tourism ”activity” in which all tourists participate. Food is an increasingly attractive part of tourism. Due to the competitiveness of Finnish tourism and utilizing the momentum created during the previous H4F project, the development of food tourism should continue in a coordinated manner.
The Hungry for Finland – Building a Functional Ecosystem project works as a national coordinator, developing networking, versatile tools and increasing competence for industry operators.
Picture: Emilia Hoisko
Urban&Local – The Functional Food Ecosystem of the Future 2023–2025
Objectives:
The goal of the Urban&Local project is to create an RDI- and business-promoting operator ecosystem in the local food and restaurant industry in the capital region, and to develop related experimental platforms. The project helps to identify and experiment with innovative and sustainable production, market and distribution chain solutions for urban restaurant and local food services, and supports the creation of new products and services. The focus of the project experiments are: 1) Utilization of new technologies and digitality in the production of sustainable urban food and related services and products 2) Testing innovative technologies of the future and e.g. solutions supporting the circular economy, related to food services and local food production, on test platforms in the capital region together with operators and city residents.
During the project, an Urban&Local operator network and ecosystem will be created, which will deepen the cooperation of operators in the food industry and thereby strengthen the role of Haaga-Helia UAS and especially the role of the Hungry for Finland Lab (H4F Lab), which we launched this year, as a significant and nationally known developer of the food industry. In addition, the project supports regional and interregional RDI cooperation.
Picture: Julia Kivelä
Hungry for Finland – Food Tourism Competition 2023
Hungry for Finland organizes a food tourism competition every other year. This year, we are seeking sustainable and local food tourism products.
The winner gets 5000 €, second and third place 2000 €
The winner of the student contest winner gets a 500 € gift card for a food tourism destination of their choice.
In the evaluation of the competition, attention is paid to customer orientation, experientiality including the utilization of locality, local food and stories, responsibility, business, networks and partners, digitality and versatility in the use of sales and marketing channels, and the food tourism product as a whole.
Participation is during 1.5.–31.7.2023 via a form we publish soon.
Check out the previous competitions!
Past projects
Food & tourism project 2012–2017
In the first phase of the FOOD&TOURISM project in Finland 14 case companies were visited and best practices researched during the years 2012-2013. Over 200 students of Haaga-Helia UAS participated and were given a valuable opportunity to learn in real-life cases and carrying out their thesis studies. The aim of the first phase was to create tangible, useful tools for tourism entrepreneurs with the help of a semi-scientific approach.