From Borders to Shared Space wraps up as a major success

BOSS From Borders to Shared Space program funding by the Finnish Ministry of Education was among other projects run by Haaga-Helia UAS supporting also the development of Estonian food tourism within the project “Culinary Gulf of Finland”, which had its final event on December 1^st.

The main idea of the project in question was to expose the Estonian food tourism stakeholders to the relevant Finnish experience, by using monthly workshops in order to find out the opportunities for compiling a larger and longer food tourism cooperation.

The first workshop (find materials here) was held in Tallinn on October 8^th, when up to 20 key food, tourism and food tourism stakeholders from Estonia were invited to convene under the title „Strategic Context of Food Tourism“ in order to present and discuss the past, present and future of the food tourism in the strategic context of Finland and Estonia. The core of the event was the Finnish Food Tourism Strategy and from the Estonian point of view the Estonian Food programme by the Ministry of Rural Affairs, the food tourism activities by the Estonian Tourist Board/Enterprise Estonia within the implementation of the National Tourism Development Plan and the Estonian Culinary Route and Baltic Sea Culinary Routes activities by the NGO Estonian Rural Tourism.

The second workshop (find materials here) was held on October 30th within the Tallinn FoodFair 2015 program. Around 20 food, tourism and food tourism entrepreneurs and other stakeholders convened under the title „Food, Tourism and Food Tourism Entrepreneurs“ in order to present and discuss the past, present and future of the food tourism in the entrepreneurial context of Finland and Estonia.

The third workshop (find materials here) was held as the pre-event event of Martinmarkkinat fair (21-22.11) on 20.11 in Helsinki at the Hotel & Restaurant Museum in order to present the best benchmarking cases of the Finnish food tourism to the interested fair participants from Estonia. At the project workshop a dozen of food, tourism and food tourism stakeholders convened under the title „Finnish Examples of Food Events“ in order to learn from the Finnish experiences (Michael Jasonos presented food events in Helsinki including Streat Helsinki, Restaurant Day, food delivery at Slush and Flow, Maria Mänttäri presented the Suomenlinna Kekri event and Merja Nummi of the hosting museum providing an outline of the museum involvement in the food events) shared with the Estonian stakeholders.

The closing event (find materials here) was held on as a seminar on December 1^st at Tallinn Zoo in 

Beside the project issues the presentations included ” Estonian food at EXPO2015” by Ruve Shank, Estonian Ministry of Rural Life, “Latvian Food Tourism Outline” by Antra Damberga, Lauku Celotajs/Baltic Country Holidays, Swedish and Danish Food Tourism by Kristian Sievers, Haaga-Helia UAS and “Estonian-Finnish/Finnish-Estonian Food & Tourism” by Mikko Savikko, Baltic Guide.order to provide an outline and outcome of the project to a larger audience, take a look also at other neighbours and discuss, whether based on the project in question further follow-up cooperation could be drafted.

The event was moderated by Ain Hinsberg ( Haaga-Helia Hospitality Competence Centre in Estonia) and the coffee and lunch breaks were designed to present the Finnish and Estonian food tourism.

The outcome of the seminar provided encouraging signals regarding the follow-up of the cooperation initiated by the project. The key ideas regarding the continuation were the twin-capital greater metropolitan area (Greater Helsinki/Uusimaa and Greater Tallinn/Harjumaa), chefs from the cities sharing their experience and ideas with their rural colleagues, activities targeted at the key customers (foodies) and their channels (blogs), an international event by Haaga-Helia dedicated to food tourismand Haaga-Helia student projects related to all the above.

The project and the event was evaluated by the seminar participants (40) as very interesting and needed.

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