I created a picture- board via Pinterest (social media) from Kustavi during winter time. Different winter-activities in the calming and beautiful archipelagic nature could be a way to attract people to visit Kustavin Kipinä off-season.
Pinterest could be one of many useful marketing tools for Kustavin Kipinä, through Pinterest they could download pictures of the place during winter time to show the world what an exotic place this could be during winter time.

http://pinterest.com/pin/48906345925638802/


//Alexandra

New Design in Hospitality

This is something I found really open-minded thinking. It's focus is on Hotel management
but it's main points are easily adapted to other Hospitality industry as well.

http://library.the-group.net/ihg/client_upload/file/The_new_kinship_economy.pdf

I hope you find it as useful as I did!

-Minna

Second working day @ Novia

The day started at 9 a.m. by Johanna and Sari from "Get a Life" telling us about the future and progresses in innovation processes. As there were only two group members present in the morning, we decided to join the team Lightbulb. Our task was to brainstorm the future needs of our clients customers and the basic needs that result for the company. After that we chose one topic. The topic we chose was about the winter season in Kustavi. See picture.
 
 

The last task was to write a short story about Kustavi's winter season in 2025. One team member of Spark Plugs joined us at this time. We finished the task and presented it to the other Inno Groups and Coaches before the lunch break. The rest of the day we discussed the information we received from the client Pekka Kuru. It was really fun to cooperate with the team Lightbulb and to get to know new people.

 
 - Anja, Sanna, Marko

To Innovate, Find What's Hiding in Plain Sight

I read this interesting post about innovative thinking on the HBO-blog and thought I would link it here so you guys can read it. 

It's interesting and makes one rethink..

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/innovation_requires_thinking_o.html 

Alexandra 

The meeting with Pekka Kuru

So we met our client Pekka Kuru yesterday at TuAMK. The meeting started at 12 o'clock and it was arranged together with team Lightbulb, check also their blog at http://teamlightbulb.wordpress.com/ :) The meeting started by Pekka Kuru introducing his company and telling about his company Kustavin Kipinä values. We found out about the idea behind the project which is to increase customer revenue.  His wish is that we find the way to make people to travel to Kustavin Kipinä even from a distance and expand customer arriving off season (winter time). We asked some specific questions about marketing and other customer segments. Overall the meeting went well, and things got more clear. 

The picture above is about the information we gathered as a mindmap after the meeting.

Now that we know our task, we hope that this will give us more courage to work harder for this project.

-Marko, Sanna and Minna 

Worth watching

"Tom Wujec from Autodesk presents some surprisingly deep research into the "marshmallow problem" a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average"

-Sanna-

Some questions for Pekka Kuru

Soon me, Marko and Minna are going to meet our client Pekka Kuru from Kustavin Kipinä here in Turku AMK. I was wondering few questions which might be good to get answers to.   

For example: 

What is the competitive advantage of Kustavin Kipinä?(Kilpailuetu?)

What makes Kustavin Kipinä different among the competitors?

Who are the main costumers? Customer segments?

In which direction the industry is going?

What are the future prospects?

We'll see how the meeting goes :)

-Sanna-

Benchmarks in Hospitality and Tourism

I have chosen to read the book: Benchmarks in Hospitality and Tourism written by Sungsoo Pyo, professor in the department of Tourism and Management at Kyonggi University in Seoul, Korea.

I chose this book mainly because our company case, Kustaavin Kipinä,is a business within the hospitality and tourism industry.

The theme of the book is tourism and hospitality management, which is a  unfamiliar field for me, therefore the reading process got a bit dull, as the linguistic in the literature was in some extent new for me.

The book contains of various practical articles that are of good use for practitioners that work within the hospitality industry; like hotel management, environmental systems, and destination practices. I also recommend the book for students that are interested in the book topics. The book concentrates on topics like; benchmarking, quality management, customer satisfaction, customer retention and so on.

As mentioned earlier, the book goes deep into the hospitality industry, and illustrates it by providing example cases. It provides in-depth-knowledge and practical applications. The book also explains in a very clear way the principles of benchmarking. Benchmarking is the search of for the industry best practices that will lead to superior performance (Camp, 1989).  Benchmarking is one of the learning processes.  It is a process of comparing one’s business processes to the bests in the industry.  It is usually quality, time and cost that measured.  This book also looks at satisfaction barometers, indicator development, and networking with benchmarking partners. The literature also explores the strengths and weaknesses of different benchmarking ways. 

Overall, this book is a good basis for getting to know different benchmarking techniques that can improve tourism businesses anywhere. Therefore, I think I´ll have much use of this book throughout our project in Kunstenniemi.

Alexandra 

Developing Hospitality Properties & Facilities

Edited by Josef Ransley & Hadyn Ingram. Second edition 2004. 

I chose this book because of my interests to hospitality management. All the examples through book were about hotels, which isn't directly what Kustavin Kipinä does. But it's wide discussion about the things need to get done when developing hospitality industry. From my point of view it's easily applicable to other industries as well. It's written by specialists and experts of hospitality management which brings examples to real life and existing companies. 

It’s a guide to develop your product to respond to the change of climate, market and consumer’s, owner’s & staff’s needs. It’s cut up in five sections, which all together build practical and operational product. Contrary to old system, where developing process has been seen as chain, today’s model is circle where all sectors affect to product through all processes. These sectors are concept, planning, construction, operations and asset management.

Concept is about how finished product might look; what market it might serve. It’s part of an overall development and brand management. Two main divisions are feasibility (inc. market research, financial analysis & reporting) and design (strategy that will develop the property).

Planning chapter highlights the importance of development strategy to be well prepared and achieved in every section: design, finance, risks, legal agreements, contracts, brand ect. Construction is about building, renovation and adaption. This chapter increases awareness of design as a part of hospitality development process.

Operation chapter considers meaning of operational planning and relationships: How to involve all participants (customer, the owner, the management company, staff) into developing process and how to reflect to their different needs. Asset management chapter is about unit operations, maintenance & how climate, geography and culture affect to the developing process.

It was lots of information I already knew but though numerous examples I got truly different kind of understanding these aspects in developing. This was again mind opener for me. Thou it wasn't much new info, it was different way to see things. This is well done outside-box thinking (development only seen by owner in my before readings). Nice advance for my mind & thinking. 

-Minna