When the lockdown hit, we teamed up with one Finnish University leading in pedagogical solutions – Haaga-Helia – to further develop our offering. We already have some new exciting solutions, and some of our clients are piloting them at this very moment (October 2020).
Interestingly, we never thought about virtual school visits – it just seemed something impossible. Most importantly, for our clients who travel to Finland, school visits are only part of the experience. We are talking about a unique experience with a capital E: traveling to another country, walking in Helsinki city center, eating some traditional Finnish dishes, perhaps a sauna and a dip in the Baltic sea, and so on. Consequently, people are willing to pay the price for that experience. How much would someone pay for a virtual experience? As museums needed to close, there have been many virtual exhibitions available, but most of them are free, or charge only a fraction of the standard ticket price. Why? You do see precisely the same paintings. Using zoom-in you can even get a closer look than have ever been possible, and you may stay in front of one painting all the time you want to without feeling embarrassed. Well, because the experience is just not the same! It would be less valuable, and consequently, the price needs to be less as well.
For virtual school visits, this creates a huge problem. Our costs are practically the same: we need to pay for our guide who would go around in a school with a camera, and we would need to pay for the school as they would still need to use their time to receive the virtual visitors. But, would the clients pay the same price for a virtual visit? Everyone suggests that no, they would not. Another, and perhaps even a bigger problem, is that you can take photos more or less freely from school and students on a regular school visit as long as you don’t publish them anywhere. But, if you take photographs or videos for someone else, you would need permission from each child’s parent who appear on the photo or video. That practically makes impossible turning the “traditional” school visits into virtuals.