I got the idea of starting this blog when I began wondering whether I would like to write something more creative about travel and tourism, as I work with tourism research every day at Visitory. Over time, it became clear that most of the posts would focus on steamboats and Nordic skating. And I suppose my research background will always be visible in my writing, but at least I can imagine myself writing more creative texts as well.
My background
My interest in tourism and travel began in 2001, when I started working aboard the s/s Tarjanne as a first mate. Tarjanne is a steamboat that has sailed the same route between Tampere and Virrat since 1908. After working there, I found myself studying tourism at the University of Joensuu (now the University of Eastern Finland). My major subject at the University of Tampere was history, and tourism studies proved extremely useful in helping me understand the phenomenon of tourism more profoundly. At the same time, I began to see the tourism sector as a potential field for finding a “real job” – although I still like to say that my real job is working as a steamboat master and chief engineer, and that I do something else for a living during the wintertime.
I wrote my Master’s thesis (in Finnish) on steamboat traffic on Lake Näsijärvi between 1918 and 1939. In that work, I was able to combine two topics that are very important to me: steamboats and tourism. After graduating, I began working at the Research and Education Centre Synergos on several tourism research projects. One short project led to another, and this period lasted for eight years (2008–2016). After that, I started working on my PhD project, which focuses on InterRail in the 1970s and 1980s. You can read the articles here and here.
I worked as a full-time PhD researcher for one year, and at the same time I was recruited to Visitory (former TAK Research) in 2016. At the moment (2026), I am still working at Visitory, where my research mainly focuses on the economic impacts of tourism, foreign tourists in Finland, and tourism statistics. Alongside this work, I am continuing to write my PhD thesis. In the summertime, you can also find me aboard various Finnish steamboats.
So, while I am well acquainted with tourism as an applied research field, blogging is something entirely new to me. Let’s see what happens!