Driving Change in Animal Tourism

Driving Change in Animal Tourism

Hetta Huskies' role in a Finnish research project bringing tourism companies together to challenge practices and improve transparency in sleddog welfare.

Slowly, slowly, slowly. In the summer of 2016, 11 Finnish tourism companies came together with the Multidimensional Tourism Institute (MTI) of the University of Lapland on a project called 'Animals and Responsible Tourism: Promoting Business Competitiveness through Animal Welfare'. It was the culmination of Anna's 3-year goal to bring companies to the table to challenge current sleddog welfare practices and build transparency in standards for customers.

  • 11 Finnish tourism companies joined the MTI / University of Lapland project (summer 2016)
  • Project: 'Animals and Responsible Tourism: Promoting Business Competitiveness through Animal Welfare'
  • Funded primarily by Tekes under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
  • Each participating company contributed at least EUR 1000
  • Driven by Anna's 3-year goal to challenge sleddog welfare practices and build transparency

The project and its partners

The bulk of the funding came from Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation - under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Each participating company also contributed at least EUR 1000, on top of the time and cost of travelling to meetings across Lapland over the 2-year project.

Beyond Hetta Huskies / CAPE Lapland Oy, the participating Finnish tourism companies are Lapland Safaris, Harriniva, Ranua Wildlife Park, Arctic Reindeer, Arctic Husky Farm, Northern Gate Safaris, Nurminiemen Ratsutila, OFF-Piste Adventures, Polar Lights Tours and Ruska Laukka. Three international partners also collaborated closely, including David Fennell (Professor, Brock University) and Joonas Rokka (EMLYON Business School).

Quality in animal tourism services

Quality in an animal-based tourism service can be summarised three ways. From the animal's perspective: their personalities and species-specific needs (feeding, care, safety, training) in relation to their work, environment and equipment. From the customer's: the safety of the service and the cleanliness of its environment. From the employee's: sufficient resources, transparency in operations, and ongoing monitoring and training.

Since animals are the core of many tourism businesses in Northern Finland, quality starts with their welfare, which links straight to service quality and customer satisfaction. When the animal does well, customers, employees and entrepreneurs all do well.

A pragmatic approach to change

This project approaches optimal animal welfare pragmatically, in a way that makes good business sense. Change in any industry comes from incrementally shifting perspective until the tipping point, at which the new view becomes the norm. Developing base and optimal standards that are mandatorily transparent to the public - and against which the public can choose - is one way of achieving this.

What we don't want is to scare the public into believing participation in the sport is inherently bad. Were that to happen, even the sleddogs on high-quality farms would be put at risk. Animal rights activists would be better off campaigning for a surge of interest in geriatric sleddog care than for a ban on the industry itself.

We are mushers and we are proud

Mushers are a generally misunderstood group of people. We in fact find a society within our kennels, with our dogs, fellow mushers and all the families involved. 'All those dogs' are our family, our village, our hearts living outside our bodies. We not only know their names, we know their personalities, when they are happy and when they might be sad.

This is a lifestyle, not an occupation, a career or a business. Our dogs are our coworkers, our friends and a furry neck to nuzzle when things just get too hard in the world. Many will misunderstand us, and that's ok - but we are Mushers and we are Proud. (Gina Phillips, Krabloonik Dogsledding, CO.)