Internship at VisitJyväskylä

My internship was taking place at a local tourism company, VisitJyväskylä. It opened a place marketing and digital marketing world to me. I obtained new practical experiences and valuable opportunity which for turning up my further individual development on a compound field which combined by international business and other possible industries.

VisitJyväskylä is a branch company of Finnish tourism development department and works together with VisitFinland and BusinessFinland and all other relevant industries for promoting the tourism development for the city of Jyväskylä. It also contributes at Jyväskylä local travelling spots, events and potential markets exploitation and research.

My internship duration was taken in a whole year of 2019. As a local supporting part for the programme of the 2019 Year China-Finland Winter Sports Games, my responsibilities were to participate as a Chinese speaking tour guide; searching and analyzing the expectation and perception of Chinese outbound tourists for Jyväskylä and to summarize a thesis as a report; to be the communication bridge for VisitJyväskylä and Chinese potential cooperation partners. On the other hand, I also dedicated to generating the original digital visual materials, aesthetic editing and then did the digital marketing on Chinese social media platforms. In addition to these, I assisted some other tourism relevant companies to translate their websites, flyers in Chinese and searching Chinese customers for them as well.

My working contents were somehow to work for some several different projects together at the same time, among which, the Chinese market searching, digital marketing stories or scripts creating, visual material collecting, and editing were the main tasks. The Chinese outbound tourists behaviour study and the ‘’free-guiding Jyväskylä for you in weekend’’ project managing were the auxiliary projects. Moreover, I need to participate the random meetings for listening the seasonal performances of visitJyväskylä and discussing the marketing strategy for the next period. Likewise, I also joined in various travelling spots and museums visiting activities with other VisitJyväskylä guides to experience the design of tourist routes and gave the feedback to entrepreneurs and VisitJyväskylä for assisting to optimize the combinations of their tourism products and services. Meanwhile, I did city guiding job for Chinese sports business survey group and participated the reception work for Chinese marathon athlete, and analyzed their perceptions of tourism performance of Jyväskyä after their visiting and summarized them into my thesis discussion section. Further, I got connection with some Chinese social media platforms. Recently, I am still continuously working for creating the opportunity to bring more Chinese potential customers to Jyväskylä.

My internship position was like a real job position which for taking place for a new start-up section in a company. It has been given within many expectations, but there were no precedents models that I could reference. All efforts were good-try and learning by doing. Admittedly, it could be challenge for a workplace newcomer as me, but it also could be precious opportunity which to practice my abilities from all aspects. So do the cooperation and communication skills in working place. All of these were valuable for my career development.

The difficult part of these challenges was the creation job of visual works which have been required to meet the quality, aesthetics and Chinese audiences’ consumption psychology. Due to the lack of relevant experience, the result of my efforts did not work well at the beginning. But this also has been my study chance. I consulted some successful bloggers and collected their comments and proposals. Meanwhile, I also consulted and asked help from some experienced photographers. I am growing from my mistakes. During this time, I did not only work together with Chinese bloggers and some other influencers, to post my visual works as ads. At the same time, I did participate producing the classic tourist routes design with colleague of marketing section of VisitJyväskylä. The project of ‘’ ‘’free-guiding Jyväskylä for you in weekend’’ has helped me to be competent this task because of its direct way which to lead me to understand better about the Chinese tourists’ preference.

My work was half remotely cooperating with other colleagues and Chinese commercial partners and half practice in real stage. Among which, the most works of mine was independent and I had to make sustainable-developed decisions when design the tourist routes and services. This meant that marketing strategy skills and the design of contents of ads were very important. Moreover, I had realized that intellectual property law and visual works connected closely and its extremely important for digital marketing creators. I think this internship and my study combined perfectly to me for getting the points and put them into the role rapidly. It also assisted me to capture the place marketing and digital marketing experience nicely. This experience of internship at VisitJyväskylä was to tamp the solid basis for my future development journey.

Author: Lijia Huang