Bothnian Coastal Route (BCR) is an Interreg Aurora project aiming to increase awareness and demand for travel across the Kvarken strait and around the Bothnian Bay. The project started at the beginning of 2023, and a lot has been achieved so far.
The first part of the project involved conducting a thorough inventory of the companies and attractions, as well as their offerings along the coastline. Work package 2 focuses on sustainable development processes and competence building.
The project team has supported participating companies in starting their own learning paths towards sustainable development and certification. The project has respected the national sustainability programs and methods but also wanted to offer more tools for the companies to start their sustainability journey. To help with this work, the project was able to choose, through procurement, Jeppe Klockareson from Fair Travel and Anu Nylund from Mood of Finland as the two consultants to identify the Bothnian Coastal Route sustainability working method.
“We wanted to create a method that is suitable for the BCR area. The BCR sustainability working method will support and complement already existing programs. This working method can be the very first step for our companies to start their process towards sustainable thinking and behaviour,” says Sari Kasvi, Project Manager at BusinessOulu, one of the partners in the BCR project.
Competence and network building activities have also been arranged and are henceforth arranged for the companies. These include benchmarking and study trips for learning and networking between tourism companies from Finland and Sweden, as well as workshops for competence building, product development, and sales workshops with tour operators. A webinar series about the use of AI for tourism businesses was arranged for the companies together with the digital marketing company Kuulu at the beginning of 2025.
Increasing the Visibility and Awareness of the Coastal Route
The project’s work package 3 is all about marketing. Several marketing activities have been carried out to increase the visibility and awareness of the coastal route around the Bothnian Bay and across the Kvarken strait. A specific marketing website for the target group of Tour operators and Destination management companies, www.bothniancoastalroute.com, was built and launched to improve visibility and awareness of the area and to highlight local culture and sustainable products.
“The website is a vital resource for the travel trade, offering tour suggestions, and it is also possible to tailor them to your needs by filtering services and products available in the region,” says Erja Back, Project Leader at Visit Umeå, one of the partners in the BCR project.
So far, during 2024–2025, the project group has participated in over 16 sales and marketing events and had approximately 500 face-to-face meetings with travel trade professionals. During these workshops, and several site inspections arranged for travel trade actors to the BCR area, a genuine interest for the joint destination has been experienced, that also has delivered results in terms of concrete tour production.
To awaken and maintain the interest for this area, approximately 1300 travel trade professionals have continuously received newsletters about tours and destinations along the coast.
A collaboration with the Umeå-based company Best of Scandinavia Incoming was launched at the beginning of 2025. The partnership introduced a tailored and customizable tour around the Bothnian Bay and across the Kvarken strait as part of Best of Scandinavia’s product range.
The determined and valuable work done in the project has in addition resulted in that around 11 international Destination Management Companies (DMC) and Tour operators have introduced a tour production to the BCR-area for 2025 and/or 2026.
“A central part of the project is to establish collaboration with DMC’s as well as Tour Operators, which both organise and sell travel packages highlighting the region’s unique values. A DMC or an incoming bureau serve as a wholesaler acting as a dealer to Tour operators, by producing tours that are flexible and can be tailored to meet customer preferences. A Tour operator usually produce and sell own finished travel packages,” says Marianne Sjöström, Project Manager for the Bothnian Coastal Route project at the Kvarken Council.
Efforts have also been made to spark media and social media interest in the Bothnian Coastal Route. So far, these efforts have resulted in posts, articles, and YouTube films in English, German, French and especially Italian. The Bothnian Coastal Route received a lot of media attention when it was featured in Italian media as a Nordic summer bucket list road-trip destination. Over 20 media outlets presented BCR in texts and pictures.
The Final Stretch Remains
With less than a year remaining of the project duration, the project team still wants to continue to contribute to better conditions for economic growth for local companies through even more established collaborations with travel trade with long lasting and sustainable business relations.
With the new EU Green Claims directive coming, the project group also wants to encourage local companies to see the opportunities that the sustainable development process and competence building efforts of the project provide for the future. The work with the BCR working method towards sustainability has recently started.
Before summer, the project group look forward to sharing the recently started Food Travel Assessment for the BCR area, that will provide key insights into the current state, opportunities, and potential development strategies for food tourism in this unique coastal region. With this assessment the project group wants to further highlight new opportunities for local companies.
The project’s overall objective is to create awareness of the BCR as an attractive travel route for visitors and locals, with its outstanding nature and rich cultural heritage, and provide a sound basis for growth and sustainable tourism.
“We feel that the results up to now are well reflected in both the project’s overall objective and expected results,” Sjöström concludes.
Read more about the Bothnian Coastal Route project HERE and HERE.
Read more about the collaboration with Best of Scandinavia HERE.
Read more about the Bothnian Coastal Route sustainability working method HERE.
