Popular Finnish destination uses Telia's movement data for tourism marketing and urban planning
Since 2018, Finnish tourist favorite city Porvoo has used Telia's Crowd Insights to get valuable data on people's movement patterns. Porvoo has used the insights in planning and optimizing tourism marketing and events, as well as for supporting urban planning initiatives.
"As a Telia Crowd insights pioneer, Porvoo was involved in the first pilot project of the service in 2018 and has continued to utilize the service in various areas, mainly in marketing the city as a tourist and event destination," says Sari Myllynen, Porvoo's Tourism and Marketing Manager. "The mobile data produced by Crowd Insights has brought Porvoo completely new opportunities for targeting and developing marketing," Myllynen says.
Movement patterns brings certainty to tourism marketing and urban planning
Telia Crowd Insights for Municipalities provides Porvoo with data about people's movements during different seasons and events is actively used by Porvoo's tourism and marketing unit to do targeted marketing around events and seasonal activities. The service can, for example, show the number of visitors to Porvoo, where people arrive from even with the accuracy of postal codes, and how they move around the city after arriving there. The data is always anonymized and on an aggregated level.
"With the help of mobile data, we can efficiently target our postal campaigns, social media advertising and outdoor advertising to the areas from which people travel to Porvoo," Myllynen says.
He points out that mobility data also provides valuable information on visitor origin white spots – the areas from where few tourists arrive and where there might be a need for extra marketing initiatives to attract new visitors
In the past Porvoo's regional marketing has relied on tourism studies and now they has access to very accurate information about visitors' activity and preferences.
"For example, we can look at the number of visitors to Old Porvoo on a monthly basis, and compare the data between different years, seasons and events, Myllynen says.
"In addition to the marketing and tourism unit, data derived from Telia Crowd Insights is also of interest to the urban planning unit" says Eveliina Keski-Koukkari, Development Manager at Porvoo's Digital Services development unit.
"From an urban planning angle, it is important to have information about where and at what time the crowds move, and what route choices they make," she says. “Data on mobility can be used, for example, in green space planning and for planning optimal timing of renovation of areas.”
Comparative information and combining data sources valuable for longer-term planning
Porvoo has used the service for a long time therefore they have accumulated comparative information on people's mobility. The longer-term comparative data supports the planning of seasonal tourism and recurring events.
Myllynen says that this year, for the second time, a month-long Christmas market will be located on the Porvoo market square.
"We get to see how many people the market attracts compared to previous year and what kind of effect it has on the city," he says.
When data on the number of visitors is combined with data from surveys on the average consumption of tourists, the regional economic impact of events can also be directly calculated. In addition, information about the number of visitors and popularity of events makes it easier to budget and place events – profitable events should of course continue to be organized in the future.
"It is incredibly interesting to see how the comeback after the pandemic years affect people's tourism in Finland," says Myllynen.
Supporting Porvoo’s strategic goal of data-driven decision-making
Telia Crowd Insights also supports the strategic goals of Porvoo and that is to be data-driven in decision-making. "Our goal is to create urban life, and crowd insights is a great support for this," says Keski-Koukkari. "We can make decisions based on accurate information and move our findings forward to other areas of interest in Porvoo as well."
The insights from movement data offers numerous other opportunities that the city has not yet explored. For example, information on movements during events could be targeted at entrepreneurs, who could adjust their own activities according to when and where consumers move in different areas of Porvoo.
Telia's Business Development Manager Tero Särkiniemi is pleased that Porvoo has been an active user of Telia Crowd Insights. "It's great that Porvoo has been involved in developing the service from the very beginning and has utilized mobile data in a versatile way in its various functions," he comments.
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