Finland Leads Sustainable Tourism Debate

City of Helsinki has launched a tourism sustainability initiative in response to concerns about climate change.

The ‘Think Sustainably’ service empowers visitors to make informed daily choices, rating the Finnish capital’s restaurants, attractions, shops and accommodation against bespoke sustainability criteria.

According to a survey carried out in 2018, two thirds of residents identified the climate crisis as their major concern when thinking about the future of the city.

In response, Helsinki has launched the world’s first online service that enables making sustainable choices as easy as using an app.

Think Sustainably provides residents, visitors and business owners with practical tools to rethink their daily behaviour and make more sustainable lifestyle and business decisions.

Services filtered through the online programme include restaurants, shops, events, experiences and accommodation, each benchmarked against tailor-made criteria developed by the City of Helsinki in collaboration with the independent think tank Demos Helsinki, local interest groups and sustainability experts.

The service also includes a route planner feature that enables choosing emission-free transportation options to the wide variety of experiences on offer in the city. The route planner provides CO2 emissions in grams per person per trip. Currently gathering feedback from users, the Think Sustainably service is publicly available with plans to roll the programme out further and review its impact in 2020.

Tia Hallanoro, Director of Brand Communications & Digital Development at Helsinki Marketing said: “Locals in Helsinki are very concerned about climate crisis, over two thirds of us think it’s the most worrying thing affecting our future. Many feel frustrated that there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

"There’s a great demand for the frustration to be channelled into something productive that allows us to rethink our lifestyle and consumer patterns. As a service, Think Sustainably gives you concrete tools for that. We certainly need everybody on board.”

The current version of Think Sustainably launched in June 2019 is a pilot service and for now includes 81 participating service providers. The programme will be further developed to include a larger range of sustainable choices from restaurants to mobility.