Abstract:

Purpose:
Muisti Center of War and Peace in Mikkeli (Finland) will be opened in 2021. The purpose of this research is to attract Russian millennials to the Muisti Center of War and Peace, and define services, which will help attracting this segment.

Design:
This research idea was accepted by the Double-Degree students and implemented in the framework of the course “Hospitality management”.

Methodology:
Due to COVID situation, it was decided to collect the survey answers online. The survey invitations were sent via communication channels in social media Vkontakte and Instagram. The data was analyzed using Webropol tool. The total number of respondents is 101 (n=101). To get results for attractiveness of Muisti Center the sample was taken from people who is now living in Saint-Petersburg. Also, the population of research mainly consisted of people between 18-29 years old, which could be an appropriate age cohort to define millennials. However, few people were from other cities. The sample from population was taken using SRS (simple random sampling). The survey included 18 questions in total. After the results was collected, they were analyzed and presented in graphs and tables that shows relative frequencies in histograms and weighted arithmetic means of answers in SRS. No hypothesis testing is included – the study was observational.

Approach:
Muisti’s first exhibition will be devoted to the Winter and Continuation War of 1930s and 1940s. Muisti would like to know which attractive services they could suggest for Russian millennials for their first exhibition.

Findings:
After analyzing the data, it was decided that the age of respondents was mostly represented by the groups over 30 years and 18-29 years old. Focus auditory of the research were millennials (18-29 age group) from Saint Petersburg, and partly, from Moscow. The survey findings showed that millennials may choose interactive and game-based activities over facts and lectures. Moreover, millennials prefer to listen to personal stories or drama of individual in the contrast to more profound and scientifically proven facts of war. As research was requested by the Muisti Center of War and Peace, in the end we included some of the respondent’s suggestions and opinions on this center.

Originality of the research:
This manuscript has not been published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Keywords:

Muisti Center of War and Peace, XAMK Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Youth Work, Winter War, Russian millennials