Traditional packaging models, including transportation, accommodation, dining, and

activities are fundamental but tend to overlook the fact that today’s offerings or value

propositions need to create “a total experience” for the customer. Successful organizations

thus go beyond packaging and instead co-produce attractive offerings to the tourists across

industries. Studies have shown that a real and fictive story about the destination can give

the destination a unique competitive advantage and the tourist a more meaningful

experience. Stories can act as a framework as they communicate the core values in an

understandable and memorable way. Through the story, the destination or organization can

create meaning in relation to what they like to communicate. The story becomes a verbal

and visual metaphor which shows the total offering. A good story needs to have an arena,

characters, and a structure. Lately a lot of focus is put on the so called literary and film

induced tourism. Another phenomenon is to develop concepts around traditions like textile,

cheese, meals, and furniture when actors are marketing the destination together. A key

success factor in all stories is an unbroken story line. To market a tourism destination on a

common story implies close contact between all stakeholders, friction free communication,

and the development of a common story, which later on can be conceptualized and told.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the potential of storytelling as a tool for destination

development by exploring five different storytelling cases, one in each Nordic country. In

particular the study focuses on how storytelling is practiced, how it is organized and if and

how a specific communication platform can improve storytelling practice in the Nordic

countries and function as a means of closer stakeholder cooperation and improved tourist

experiences.

The data collection includes a combination of different methods: interviews with the main

stakeholders related to all five cases, collection of existing documents related to the five

cases, observation of stakeholder meetings, and participant observation of storytelling events.

The project is ongoing but so far we have interviewed key stakeholders in each destination

case and gained their insights into how to develop and communicate stories. The next step is

to experiment with the common communication platform in each of the destinations in the

Nordic countries.