Voluntourism is a relatively new type of tourism considered to contribute to the sustainability of the industry because of its ties to the local community and the destination. In recent years, with the strong impact of covid-19 crisis on the travel economy new practices and directions of tourism development were driven, and the requirement for sustainability has been emphasized. This research investigates the question: What is the potential for voluntourism in the province of Central Finland? Three studies were conducted. Firstly, existing secondary data was investigated, such as online reviews, blogs and media articles regarding voluntourism in Finland. Secondly, a questionnaire was conducted, which targeted municipality actors, such as mayors, business representatives, as well as regional developers and Leader local action groups, rural entrepreneurs, farm owners, village associations and other parties of interest. Thirdly, theme interviews were conducted with key actors about their current activity and interest in voluntourism to discover examples of existing uncoordinated voluntourism activity in the region. The results, which regard the identification of the voluntourism term, the existing concepts in Finland and the activity in Central Finland, revealed both opportunities and challenges. The term is unknown, and it does not cover all the activity that could be developed in Central Finland. The need is evident for multifaced and complex networking, as well as for the planning and funding of concrete piloting actions of voluntourism in the province. The data gathered could also be applied to the building of a national operating model of voluntourism. This study is a part of “The Value Project: Central Finland as a Leading Province for Volunteer Tourism”, which is implemented in cooperation between Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences and Central Finland Villages Association, and co-funded by the European Union.

Travelers nowadays increasingly seek destinations and activities through which they can immerse themselves in the local culture as a contrary to mass tourism and inauthentic tourist attractions. This has led to the reconsideration of tourism types and other activity involving travelling, such as voluntourism or volunteering away from home, which has earlier been predominantly seen as volunteering rather than tourism. Digitalization has brought opportunities for new actors to provide such services. Apart from the non-commercial activity, volunteering travellers are often willing to pay to enter the authentic scene and act together with and in benefit of the locals. Previous research has already established that Finland has the potential to provide a variety of experiences desired by voluntourists, and spontaneously emerging, uncoordinated voluntourism activity exists in the country. This activity, however, differs from voluntourism in other parts of the world and attracts different tourists. To be able to systematically design voluntourism activity as commercial tourism products, the influence of multiple factors defining visitor’s choice needs to be taken into consideration and understood. This paper aims at identifying the major factors and producing a model of conceptualizing commercial voluntourism services. The paper uses qualitative research data which consists of 70 global actors’ websites in total. Content analysis and quantifying is used. The most typical elements of commercial concepts are identified, and the model for designing a concept is created. The found elements are as follows: destination, significance and amount of voluntary work, traveller’s motives, duration of trip, need of qualification. The model shows that these elements work as dichotomy indicators. The element could be considered as “either – or” type of choice, but some activity could also be situated in between the extremes. For example, the duration of a trip can vary from one day to one year, but some trips’ duration can be less than the maximum and more than the minimum. The model promotes further voluntourism development in the Nordic countries such as Finland but could potentially be used even more broadly. The results reveal the importance of understanding the customer insight, and further steps should include testing of products designed according to the suggested model and studying customer reviews from destinations in the Nordic countries.