What do Bulgaria and Finland have in common? Not very much, according to Dragomir Tsoukev, apart from having to remove your shoes when entering someone’s home. “Outside larger cities like Helsinki, Finland feels more like America, with wide open spaces, and houses and scattered shops,” he said. This can be attributed to its 5.3 million citizens inhabiting an area three times the size of Bulgaria, albeit much of it inhospitable territory.

From November 23 to 30 2007, he, along with a colleague and four other instructors from universities in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Lithuania, converged on Mantta Business School. With about 300 students, it serves as a branch of the PIRAMK University of Applied Sciences in Tampere, Finland’s second-largest city. Their official purpose was to hold seminars about commerce.

In May of that year, the school had e-mailed invitations to various European institutions. Todor Dyankov and Stanislav Ivanov, professors of hotel management at the International University College in Dobrich, responded with a syllabus for a nine academic-hour course on the theme of tourist destination marketing. They received an approval.

Unfortunately, a week before their scheduled departure, Ivanov was forced to withdraw because of a family emergency. Tsoukev, a teacher of business English, then agreed to substitute for him, and underwent a crash overview of the material he would be co-presenting in Finland.

With all the paperwork in order, they flew off. Some unexpected delays at Frankfurt however, meant they landed in Helsinki at 9.24pm – nearly three-and-a-half hours past their scheduled rendezvous. As the other visiting academics had already been met and taken to Mantta, they were instructed to take a coach to Tampere where they would try again.

Thus far neither man particularly felt any culture shock because the airport and city resembled any other in Europe, including Sofia. Yet the two-and-a-half hour journey made it clear this was not Bulgaria. “Everything was already blanketed in snow, including vast tracts of forests,” Tsoukev recalled. “The ride was very smooth on account of their roads, and motorists drove very lackadaisically.

Within the bus itself, silence prevailed; the passengers – indeed Finns in general – do not say much. “In terms of disposition, they resemble the Japanese,” Dyankov said.

At Tampere they were greeted by the school’s international co-ordinator, Mari Rytisalo, who drove them the 90km to Mantta, and their guest accommodation.

The following day, Sunday, they did some exploring. They could now see their block situated between a pristine lake and an old cemetery. Satisfying their appetite proved more vexing as Finnish businesses normally close on Sundays, although some stores open at noon.

The following week, the guest lecturers began their lessons with their designated groups. Topics included the impact of free trade, protectionism, communism, the transitional phase and globalisation on Lithuania’s manufacturing sector, by Vilnius University professor Erika Vaiginiene, and trade theory and risk analysis of different countries by Birgit Martinek of the IMC University of Applied Sciences in Krems, Austria.

To the Bulgarians’ surprise, when their turn came on Wednesday, a busload of students from PIRAMK’s School of Hospitality Management in Tampere arrived especially to hear them.

Dyankov opened his lecture by giving an overview of Bulgaria’s attractions, starting with the Black Sea and mountain ski resorts, and adventure activities such as paragliding, rafting, mountaineering and cave exploration. Also highlighted were the cultural and historical aspects featuring Veliko Turnovo, Old Plovdiv, Rousse, Nessebur, and the legacies of Thracian, Roman, Byzantine and medieval civilisations. Health tourism, which included spa treatments and medical services, was also mentioned.

Moving to the business side, he presented a profile of the visitors themselves: their lengths of stay, modes of transport, places visited, purchases made and vital statistics. Bulgaria’s competitors in the tourist trade, essentially regional countries, particularly Greece, Turkey, Croatia and Cyprus, were assessed.

“I then went over the different enterprises involved such as hoteliers, tour operators, travel agencies, airlines, restaurants, retail and wholesale, government agencies and local communities, operating both individually and collectively, and their shared benefits and liabilities,” Dyankov said.

During much of the lecture, Tsoukev, sitting among the audience, would bring up issues and raise questions for Dyankov to address or expand on, things the attendees seldom did. “Unlike American, or even Bulgarian students, Finns tend to be passive in the classroom,” Tsoukev, who had previously taught in a high school in Chino, California, for five years, said. He also gave some talks of his own.

That constituted the first half of the course. The students’ assignment was to then identify various prospects within their country, form a particular image of Bulgaria suited to their wants, tastes and pocketbooks, and sell it.

As the participants only had that afternoon and evening to prepare reports, they had to rely on first-hand knowledge, intuition and anecdotal evidence of the Finnish market.

That three of them had actually holidayed in Bulgaria was an asset. For visiting international students, mostly from Nigeria, Poland and Turkey, the project was optional.

Upon returning the following day, small groups of participants presented their findings and plans of actions with the aid of PowerPoint. In this context, they acted as travel consultants to Finnish travel agencies and airlines, informing and trying to persuade them to market Bulgaria as a great place to visit.

A student from the first group, Anu Anapainen, said that any “post-communist” or “former-communist” image would deter Finnish tourists, and this labelling must therefore never appear on brochures or ads. “Despite Finland’s socialist nature, communism evokes strong antipathy, especially among the older generation,” she explained. “This is because for much of our history, we have been dominated by, and fought or struggled against, Russia and later, the Soviet Union.” (On a travel website, a former American Peace Corps volunteer wrote of how he found certain aspects of Bulgaria’s communist heritage “quite charming”, and urged Westerners to hurry and experience it before it was too late.)

On a related issue, students said that differentiating and targeting the various socio-economic groups in Finland was harder and less effective than in other countries because class distinction here was less pronounced. Nearly all Finns could afford trips to virtually all popular, tourist destinations – or not afford those at the higher end of the scale. What mattered more was their level of maturity.

“The younger crowd seeks out good nightlife: cool cafes, bars, nightclubs – and cheap alcohol,” Jenny Ajoksenmaki, a visitor to Slunchev Bryag (Sunny Beach), said. She explained that Alco, the government-owned beverage company, was a monopoly that fixed exorbitant prices for alcoholic drinks to curb its consumption. Marketing efforts aimed at young adults should foster the “party image” of the Black Sea resort areas.

Couples with children, on the other hand, would prefer a more family-oriented atmosphere such as in Balchik, while older travellers would be keener on the rural and ecotourism offered in the hinterland. These include staying in guesthouses in Tryavna and Bozhentsi, and exploring the surrounding area.

Another group said that companies could promote and advertise through a variety of media such as television, newspapers, magazines, the internet, direct mail and travel fairs. Exchange programmes such as those involving students, instructors and business people were also beneficial.

Tsoukev, however, noted that Finns were not too keen on television and radio. “It wasn’t like Bulgaria where you see TVs and radios in shops and small businesses. We never saw either there except in Mari’s home – and they were off the whole time. The Finns are more into reading, the outdoors, arts and craft, sports and travelling.”

With regards to advertising per se, culture played yet another role. Kaisa Sohlman revealed that commercials in Finland avoided being “loud, flashy and flagrant”. He said that this would be off-putting. “This comes across as bragging – ie, a negative virtue in our country.” Instead, advertisers should use a “soft, modest approach”.

Given their time constraints, Dyankov commended the students for their efforts. “More accurate, detailed and extensive findings would have to involve scientific market research,” he said, a topic that Luc Lefebvre of the Belgian Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen had presented to his class.

Indeed the students emphasised that their findings applied only to Finland; it could well be completely different in neighbouring Sweden and Russia.

After class hours, Rytisalo would show the visitors around town: museums, libraries, parks, churches and natural areas. One that particularly intrigued them was a shop carrying folk crafts and items, including small wooden figurines and ancient good-luck charms.

The evenings brought an introduction to traditional Finnish hospitality. On their first night, the professors and staff gathered in Rytisalo’s home for an informal cocktail, followed by a Finnish meal. “Certain foods here were almost identical to Bulgarian ones, like cucumber, tomato and cheese salad, Russian and French salads and cabbage rolls,” Tsoukev said. They also served small tarts, minced meat fillets and baked perch. “The main difference is that Finns eat a lot more fish.”

On subsequent evenings they dined in traditional-style restaurants. There wood was the primary material for small buildings, homes and furniture. These resembled the houses and villages in parts of the American Midwest and Canada.

The only irritant for the foreigners amid all this charm was their hosts’ propensity to talk to each other in Finnish for inordinate periods, even though their English, like most other Finns, was fairly good.

On the final night of their stay, the group went on an evening hike through a forest at minus eight Celsius. After an hour, they came upon a lodge complex in the middle of nowhere. They then entered the anteroom of a sauna. “When you’re in a sauna, just sit back… and enjoy the hot steam while flagellating yourself with a leafy, birch branch,” Rytisalo said. “After the pores of your skin have opened, run outside and rub yourself with snow or jump into the lake, and come back in. Repeat this several times.”

Everyone opted instead to grill some sausages over a nice, warm fire, and drink hot coffee before entering the lodge proper for a cosy rest.

Halfway through their return, Rytisalo stopped the group in the middle of the thickets. “Ok, everyone just stand still, and don’t say or do anything,” she commanded. It proved very difficult, but they managed. The silence was absolute. “This is Finland.” They tried once more…but alas, Tsoukev ruined everything. “We were down to the last 12 seconds – when suddenly my cell phone rang. It was my wife calling from Bulgaria.”