Team Boden inspired municipalities in Norrbotten

Boden Turism ekonomisk förening, Boden municipality, Boden Business Park and Swedish Lapland Visitors Board invited the region’s municipalities and stakeholders to an inspiring day in November. Team Boden shared strategic choices and operational efforts they have made to strengthen the development of the tourism industry. But also to develop the attractiveness and visibility of Boden towards various priority target groups.

The meeting provided an opportunity to circulate knowledge and experiences in a sustainable and long-term way. Swedish Lapland Visitors Board’s Oskar Hederyd and Annika Fredriksson moderated the day, where the participants brought home many interesting reflections and input. Several of the county’s municipalities, business companies and Region Norrbotten were present.

Boden Together – enabling collaboration between actors

Mats Berg, Marketing Manager of Boden Municipality and Magnus Sundling, Head of Business Unit, Boden Business Park, explained how the municipality acts as an enabler in the work of shaping the local ecosystem of private, public and non-profit actors. What insights they have gained along the way, experiences created and what they consider to be the success factors for continued work.

A key example that all participants learned about was Boden Tillsammans. A self-developed model that enables collaboration between actors – commercial and non-commercial – where needs are identified and operational efforts are prioritized.

“Everything is connected. The work within Boden Tillsammans has created the conditions to further develop the division of roles and the local coordination of the stakeholder system. “It’s not us as a municipality who should be the implementers, we should create the conditions,” says Mats Berg.

“The joint work can contribute to several results. The development of the tourism industry is strengthened, the visibility and attraction of the place increases, which we hope will also lead to a growing number of inhabitants”, says Magnus Sundling.

Boden Turism and Visit Boden – a clearer part of community development

Anki Granström, chairman of the Boden Tourism Association, which brings together a large part of the local tourism companies, talked about how they worked internally in 2023 on an operational analysis and updated the local tourism strategy. Based on this, it was agreed to work with new keywords Regenerative, Cluster Development and Participation as a guide to strengthen the companies’ development opportunities.

She also highlighted how the tourism industry in Boden municipality is thinking ahead, the importance of collaboration in the county and how Boden Tourism sees the opportunity to be a given part of the ongoing conversion work and the work of contributing to increased migration.

The members of the association have agreed to close the physical tourist office and create a number of digital information nodes in various locations around the municipality, due to the decreased interest and needs of visitors to the site. The work on the destination’s common external communication channels has been renamed Visit Boden. Visit Boden is also part of the overall approach to attracting visitors to Boden.

Many of those present were interested in how Boden Tourism/VisitBoden has developed its activities and become a clearer part of community development.

“Boden Turism is now strengthening its organization with a business developer who will have an important role in the continued development work. The position is financed by Boden Municipality”, says Anki Granström.

Boden municipality sees many synergies

Linnéa Byberg, Coordinator for In-migration and Attractiveness, shared her experiences behind the new formation of human resources and the mission to help newcomers find new social networks and the creation of flyttatillboden.se. She shared her work on promoting inclusion and creating a welcoming environment for new residents. A concrete insight into how Boden is building the attractiveness and community of the future.

Jens Andersson, Head of Communications, Boden Municipality, presented how they work with communication in general and the tourism industry in particular. He believes that the place and destination Boden are closely related and have many common points of contact that make collaboration easy and the synergy effects many.

“We see our entrepreneurs in the tourism industry, and also other industries, as community builders who strongly contribute to Boden’s growth and development. We often use entrepreneurs as examples in our communication efforts,” says Jens Andersson.

Jens also explained how the communications department uses different senders and channels for different purposes and target groups. Such as local residents, newcomers and businesses. The messages work together to increase knowledge, attraction and awareness of the whole place.

The evaluation of the current program showed the importance and need for continued collaboration between municipalities to strengthen the development of both the tourism industry and the municipalities.

The inspiration day was a collaboration between Swedish Lapland Visitors Board, Boden Turism, Boden Municipality and Boden Business Park and is part of the Norrbotten Tourism Ecosystem project funded by Utveckla Norrbotten – part of Region Norrbotten.