Angelica David and Pihla Laitinen (IB19) participated in this year’s Destination Vantaa tourism competition. The planning started in the autumn of 2019 and it ended in January with the tourism Matkamessu finals.

Angelica and Pihja present their project in Messukeskus. Photo: Petrus Ranta.

The idea of Destination Vantaa is to try and find a way to bring more tourism to Vantaa. Throughout the process, the participants went to Laurea polytechnic to learn about advertisement and service design, they went to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport and gathered information from actual tourists and met up with a tourism expert.

Our project was accepted to the finals in the 2020 Matkamessut in Messukeskus. In the finals, we presented our idea of making the Finnish forest more accessible to the jury, along with 4 other groups. One group was from Turku polytechnic, two groups were from Aalto University and one from Varia vocational school. This was the second time, Tilu participated, and the second time, we qualified for the finals.

The finals was part of Matkamessut 2020 event in Messukeskus. Photo: Petrus Ranta.

The best part about the project was the flexibility we could have with our ideas and the stress-induced adrenaline rush we would get from trying to send in our presentation on time and then presenting in under 6 minutes in front of tourism experts in Messukeskus.

Text: Angelica David and Pihla Laitinen
Photos: Petrus Ranta