LUOTA – Nature-based secure services for Northern Ostrobothnia (Luontoperustaisia turvallisia palveluja Pohjois-Pohjanmaalle)
1 March 2021 - 31 December 2022
Administration and Law
In the LUOTA project, safe nature-based services and service experiences were developed in collaboration with micro-entrepreneurs and service providers in rural areas. The project organized workshops and safety training on various topics for this target group. The target area was the whole Northern Ostrobothnia.
Safe service experiences provide value to the customer
How are the basic pillars of security in your company, namely preparedness, networking, and communication, taken into account? What all contributes to your customers’ sense of safety? Join us in updating your own safety expertise!
Ensuring a safe operating environment for customers is at the core of responsible business thinking. Systematic, comprehensive, and effective safety management is perceived as an essential part of the company’s quality. Safe services provide your company with a competitive advantage and direct value to your customers.
Collaborative Development Towards Safer Services
Succeeding in an increasingly volatile and complex operational environment requires flexibility, creativity, innovative thinking, a culture of experimentation, agility, and entirely new ways of gaining insights into customers. In the LUOTA project, these challenges are addressed by activating rural nature-based service providers to develop their services safely, recognizing the importance of safety experiences and effectively communicating them. The project aims to help service providers network and learn from each other’s best practices.
Workshops were organized in the project
How do service providers develop and tailor their services to be safe? How can customers be assured that using the service is safe? How can a safe service experience be created for the customer and visually communicated? Together, we sought solutions to these questions in workshops held in Kalajoki, Kuusamo, and Rokua.
The approach used in the workshops was service design, which provides functional and practical tools for understanding customer expectations and individual needs, developing products and services that meet them, and creating a safe customer experience. Service providers can easily and quickly implement the concrete and easily applicable results of the workshops into their daily business operations.
Additionally, from August to September 2021, safety-themed training sessions were organized in the project. Key topics included safety management and legal issues such as data protection and cybersecurity.
Brief Overview of the LUOTA Project
Objective
Developing safe nature-based services together with service providers and actors in the North Ostrobothnia region.
Key Measures of the Project
- Mapping nature-based services and service providers in the North Ostrobothnia region and conducting a survey related to service safety.
- Organizing safety training and safety communication workshops in Kalajoki, Kuusamo, and Rokua.
- Identifying potential users of nature-based services through customer segmentation.
- Creating a service offering for safe nature-based services and preliminary business models.
- Producing a visual toolkit to support safety communication and marketing.
- Assisting regional nature-based service providers in networking.
Funding
LUOTA is 100% EU-funded activation project.
Implementation and Collaboration in the Project
The project was implemented by Oulu University of Applied Sciences Ltd (Oamk). Collaboration in the project involved Naturpolis Oy, Humanpolis Oy, as well as other regional development companies, tourism associations, and flagship companies.