Low season travel - Harnessing the Magic of Darkness and Dark Skies

The webinar brought together two Interreg projects, Light in the Dark, co-funded by Interreg Baltic Sea Region and the Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic project GLOW2.0. Collectively the projects cover eight countries.

The aim of the webinar was to share inspiration for SMEs and DMOs in utilizing darkness and dark skies in the production and promotion of low-season travel. We also wished to raise the question as to the purpose of tourism and what Key Performance Indicators are measured. Is successful tourism development merely measured in increasing amount of visitors during peak periods?

Some of the key factors for low-season development, outcomes of the Light in the Dark project were briefly presented.

Ged Brown,  Founder & CEO, Low Season Traveller, opened the webinar with his key note presentation. He talked of the art of being exceptional and extraordinary, showing thought provoking images and statistics in the growth of tourism that can overwhelm destinations lacking strategic planning. He emphasized the need for “cathedral thinking” where we think of the legacy that we wish to deliver to future generations.

These insights were then backed-up by trends that support low-season travel in our region.

Susanna Lahtinen, PhD candidate and Curator at The Regional Museum of Southwest Finland talked of darkness as an element for touristic experiences now and in the past. She drew on literature on how the wish to experience cultural sights during low seasons and at night is not a new phenomenon at all. She shared examples from the work of the Turku museums and gave a poetic inspiration on how darkness can be encompassed.

Daisy Silvennoinen and Martina Ui Dholain from the project GLOW 2.0 explained what dark sky tourism is, the challenges of light polution and light design and shared innovative ideas of tourism services based upon experiencing dark skies and stars.

All the presentations are available here, as well as the webinar on our YouTube channel.

The topics explored during the webinar are supported by sources like  the BBC and Booking.com who have predicted the key tourism trends for 2025 as being; off-the-beaten-track travel, Noctourism (nighttime travel experiences), Coolcation and Calmcation (quiet destinations).

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