Arctic Europe Tourism Cluster (AETC): Reimagining Cross-Border Tourism Discovery
Over 100 providers, three countries, and one search box: Arctic Europe stopped asking visitors to understand its geography and started asking what they actually want to do.
The Arctic Europe Tourism Cluster (AETC) represents a unique cross-border tourism region spanning Northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway, bringing together over 100 tourism providers with a shared ambition to strengthen international visibility and support sustainable, year-round travel.
While the region offers a diverse range of high-quality experiences, the digital landscape had traditionally been fragmented across destinations, platforms, and providers, making it difficult for visitors to discover relevant services in a simple and intuitive way.
To address this, AETC partnered with Tietotalo to develop Destination Direct Search, a visitor-centric search and discovery solution designed to unify the Arctic Europe experience. By focusing on visitor intent rather than destinations, and by enabling direct connections to tourism providers, Destination Direct Search creates a shared digital discovery layer that improves accessibility, strengthens local businesses, and positions Arctic Europe as one coherent destination.
The challenge
AETC, through its This Is Arctic initiative, needed a solution that simplifies discovery, improves visibility, and supports a more sustainable and direct tourism ecosystem. This created several specific challenges:
- Tourism services and experiences were distributed across many different websites, destinations, and providers
- Visitors needed to understand regional structures just to find relevant information
- Discoverability of smaller or less-known providers was limited
- Booking and availability information was fragmented across multiple systems
- Heavy reliance on third-party platforms (OTAs) reduced margins and ownership of customer relationships
Underneath all of this was a single need: to present Arctic Europe as one unified, visitor-friendly destination rather than a patchwork of separate markets.
The solution
Tietotalo developed Destination Direct Search, also known in Finland as Superhaku, a visitor-centric search and discovery solution. It allows visitors to explore Arctic Europe based on their needs and interests, rather than destinations or administrative structures, acting as a shared discovery layer across the region that helps users find relevant experiences regardless of country, provider, or platform.
A key principle of the solution is its direct-to-supplier approach, connecting visitors directly to tourism providers through integrations with booking systems, APIs, and property management systems where possible. Similar solutions had already been built by Tietotalo for the destinations Ylläs, Vuokatti, and Ruka-Kuusamo, giving AETC a proven foundation to build on rather than a first-of-its-kind experiment.
Key features
- Visitor intent based search: the solution is built around what the visitor is looking for, such as activities, themes, or travel periods, instead of predefined destination categories.
- Cross-border discovery: Destination Direct Search treats Arctic Europe as one coherent region, letting users explore experiences across Finland, Sweden, and Norway without barriers.
- Provider-neutral visibility: experiences are surfaced based on relevance, giving equal opportunity for both large and small providers to be discovered.
- Direct-to-supplier model: the platform bypasses traditional OTA intermediaries by connecting directly to supplier systems, so revenue and customer relationships stay with the providers.
- Hybrid integration model: the solution combines live API integrations with a structured product card module, allowing all partners to be included regardless of their technical setup.
- Scalable architecture: designed as a foundation that can evolve toward full system integrations, real-time data, and more advanced capabilities over time.
Data ownership and the commercial model
A key requirement for AETC was ensuring that tourism providers retain control over their business and data. The solution was designed around direct connections to supplier systems where possible, no dependency on OTA platforms that take commission or control customer relationships, retention of customer data within the provider ecosystem, and support for direct sales channels instead of intermediary-driven distribution. This approach strengthens the independence and sustainability of local tourism businesses.
The approach: a pragmatic MVP
Rather than building a fully integrated system from the start, Tietotalo implemented a pragmatic minimum viable product approach. With over 100 partners involved, each using different booking systems, a fully integrated solution from day one would have required more than 60 custom API connections.
To balance ambition with feasibility, a hybrid model was introduced: a limited number of API integrations to demonstrate live data capabilities, a manual product card module to include all partners regardless of their technical setup, and a unified front-end experience ensuring consistency for users. The following API integrations were implemented as part of this first phase:
- GoToHub
- Profitroom
- Billberry
- Visit Group
- Bokun
This approach made it possible to demonstrate the full Destination Direct Search concept while staying within budget and timeline constraints.
The results
- Improved user experience: visitors can discover relevant experiences faster and more intuitively, without needing to understand destinations or navigate multiple platforms.
- Stronger provider visibility: tourism providers gain exposure within a shared regional platform, including those without advanced digital systems of their own.
- Direct commercial impact: the direct-to-supplier model supports higher margins, better control over bookings, and stronger customer relationships.
- A scalable digital foundation: the solution is built to evolve, allowing future integrations, automation, and real-time capabilities to be added over time.
Why it matters
This project demonstrates a broader shift in how tourism ecosystems can operate digitally: from fragmented platforms to a unified discovery layer, from destination-led navigation to visitor-driven exploration, from OTA dependency to direct supplier relationships, and from isolated providers to a connected regional ecosystem. Destination Direct Search shows how digital solutions can improve both the visitor experience and the long-term sustainability of the tourism industry.