I have been fascinated by travel and discovery ever since I was a little girl and my parents took me on adventurous trips around the world. This lead me to choosing Tourism as a study major which then brought me to Helsinki for an exchange year in 2010. My passion for discovery and exploring bloomed as I fell in love with the city that I now still call my home, so I started sharing by writing for Spotted by Locals Helsinki (check out my articles here!).
As I approached the end of my time at university, I was confronted with the challenging decision of choosing a topic for my diploma thesis – the very final step. It took me a while to realise that the topic that was meant to be for me was right in front of my nose! So I talked to Bart and Sanne, the founders of Spotted by Locals, who quickly agreed to collaborate with me for my diploma dissertation.
We came up with the plan of initiating co-operations with tourism offices to spread “the local virus” further. I was lucky to win VisitHelsinki over to work with us on a pilot project, and we launched a co-operation which you can see here: http://www.visithelsinki.fi/spottedbylocals
To get to the bottom of Local travel as a concept and to determine its relevance in tourism today, I talked to many very interesting and inspiring people, who helped me a lot by giving me such great insights. Both well-known travel bloggers and experts from the tourism industry contributed to my research, to make sure working together on a different level would be successful for everyone involved.
Well, that’s it in a nutshell – if you’re interested in all the details, check out the final thesis!
https://media.www.spottedbylocals.com/publications/Thesis-Kathrin-Deter.pdf