Savonia University of Applied Sciences attended as a partner on an international Service Design in Tourism co-operation pilot project, where the functionality, utilization and efficiency of the service design was simultaneously tested in seven different nations in order to enhance and to develop travel services.

MyServiceFellow mobile ethnographic research was conducted between the dates of 27.12.2011 and 11.3.2012 in Tahko tourism resort, located in Central Finland. The central aim of the study was to enhance the services of the tourism area, and based on the research, to produce a tourism development plan in which the data would be gathered on the basis of subjects’ immediate emotional reflections.

The sample of the research was 33 adult Tahko visitors, of which the majority originated from Southern Finland. The subjects reported their feelings on experienced services during their vacation by utilizing MCI-University developed myServiceFellow mobile application. The subjects were able to submit text comments, voice comments, pictures and videos to highlight the importance of the submitted Touchpoint.

By the end of the holiday all the subjects were interviewed in order to create a greater overall picture of the subjects’ holiday and to clarify the aims of the left Touchpoints. Based on the results of the conducted research, a tourism development plan for the area was created and individual reports were handed out to the associated companies.

When the results were categorized, on a scale from -2 to +2, cross-country skiing appeared to have received the most positive value of 1.4. In contrast, the respondents’ submitted feedback evaluated the infrastructure related matters the most negative with a value of 0.44.