2025

Lybeck, Robin; Ascenção, Mário Passos; Cardinale, Stefania; Horn, Susanna

While Porvoo is a popular Finnish day-tour destination with occasional large crowds during the summer season and key events, it does not face the severe overtourism pressures seen in major European hotspots such as Barcelona or Berlin. Instead, Porvoo’s challenge is twofold: attracting more overnight tourists to boost the local economy and distributing tourist traffic more evenly across the town, ensuring that lesser-known areas also receive the attention they deserve. The CULTURATI-project is launching the updated version of its platform in Porvoo. The new version features sensor data on visitor density, making it possible for the AI interface to direct visitor flows as part of the routes and game function (Ascenção, Lybeck & Horn 2024). This innovation tackles a familiar challenge faced by many popular destinations: managing visitor flow effectively, especially in a town where tourism fluctuates between quiet off-seasons and bustling peak periods.