Lexit boosts safe tourism, business amid COVID-19 pandemic

After human life and businesses being severely affected by the massive outbreak of coronavirus in Finland, as elsewhere in the world, the Lexit Project in Lapland is trying to remedy the situation through reducing the adverse impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on tourism and service sectors by ensuring safety measures.

Under the Lexit Project, the Lapland Central Hospital and tourism companies in Rovaniemi created an active network to keep the society open as safely as possible, considering the backdrop of the pandemic.

The project issues guidelines for COVID-safe life and business in Lapland, particularly for tourism, education, events, and work and this way facilitates the process and service development of the companies.

The project works to implement in full the safety directions issued by the authorities concerned for different sectors. The project also develops marketing and pro-action plans and executes them to ensure effective implementation of the directions.

The project’s objective is to achieve the ability of the society to open as safely as possible while minimising the negative impacts of the pandemic and achieving financial and social recovery.

“We have an active network with local tourism companies and their associations as well as other associated tourism and marketing organisations such as Visit Rovaniemi and the House of Lapland. We have had regular open-for-all question-answer meetings online concerning COVID-19 and safety instructions,” said Lapland Hospital District’s Primary Healthcare Chief Medical Officer Miia Palo to the Daily Finland.

She said the network co-produced guidelines for the companies as well as for the travellers and helped them apply the guidelines in their own processes.

“The Lapland Hospital District runs the project together with our neighbouring Länsi-Pohja Hospital District. The aim of the project is to deliver official information and guidance about coronavirus safety that is easy to find and apply in different sectors of life: leisure, travelling, working, and studying in Lapland,” said Palo, adding that they want to help the companies develop their products and services in post-coronavirus business environment and help the society function as normally as possible and recover as soon as possible.

She said they have a multidisciplinary network of different business sectors, NGOs, municipalities, student networks, health authorities and sámi people’s institutions. They all coordinate their own, even larger, networks and help them spread the message.

“We have created a digital brand for marketing and guidance and we use different kinds of marketing tools to gain visibility of our messages using our website, social media and print media,” added Palo.

All relevant information is published on the website www.covid19safelapland.com and most of the information is available in English and sámi languages. The information is also widely disseminated by using different channels, particularly through social media.

Replying to a query, Palo said the pandemic has hit tourism very hard, because the vast majority of the tourists in Lapland come from abroad, and this has now stopped totally.

She said, “The most important thing is to get the pandemic in control through preventive safety measures by us all, and by testing, isolating, and treating people. We all are eager to get the vaccine but we still have a long time until we can stop worrying about the other preventive measures. The most important role of the Lapland Hospital District is to lead the battle against coronavirus,”

The medical officer viewed that the wide network and the key people have been proactive in coproducing different kinds of guidance and delivering them on.

“We have got our website working well. The next step is to add more to travellers’ sites, as we go towards opening the borders. I think that the combination of person-to-person interaction in networks and digital marketing brings synergy and helps us add trust, hope, and resilience in the difficult situation we live in,” said Palo.