Stockholm Archipelago

This is the story of how sharp analysis, strong collaboration, and persistent strategic focus led to global recognition. The Stockholm Archipelago was named one of the world’s 25 best destinations for 2025 by National Geographic.

The Stockholm Archipelago comprises some 30,000 islands, islets, and skerries. Over recent decades, visitors have become increasingly important to the archipelago’s local economy. Tourism creates jobs in food, accommodation, services, and activities, while also improving the conditions for maintaining and developing critical infrastructure.

With a well-thought-out strategy and carefully selected target groups, there is much to gain for residents and businesses alike — particularly by increasing the destination’s overall value and by distributing visitor flows more evenly across the archipelago, year-round.

NEW VISITORS

A systematic collaboration to develop and market the archipelago as a visitor destination began in 2012. This work resulted in a strategy aimed at international markets, along with a vision: to become a sustainable, year-round destination of world-class quality by 2030.

To succeed in marketing and matching the archipelago with the right international audiences, solid decision-making data was essential. Which target groups were most aligned with realizing the vision? There was also a strong ambition to understand these audiences in depth — their motivations and interests. These insights needed to be “owned” by many stakeholders, as destination development and tourism in the Stockholm Archipelago are driven by a large number of small businesses and actors. Aligning the archipelago’s many stakeholders around a shared direction for concept development, packaging, and marketing was therefore crucial.

A FUTURE-ORIENTED ANALYSIS USING A GROUNDBREAKING METHOD

The Stockholm Archipelago has a long history of welcoming guests—initially in converted boathouses and lofts without running water when vacation travel began to take off in the 1950s, and later in partially luxurious homes with a high standard of comfort. Nature has always been at the core of the experience, but the way we engage with nature evolves as our lives and the world around us change.

In recent decades, urbanization has increased the distance between people and the natural environment worldwide. At the same time, interest in outdoor experiences during leisure time appears to be intensifying — perhaps because of, rather than despite, this development. Still, it is not possible to treat all nature-oriented travelers as a single group.

In 2019, Kairos Future conducted an analysis for Stockholm Archipelago that explored the future of international “outdoor tribes” — interest-defined target groups united by a longing for nature, but with differing preferences regarding adventure, services, and comfort. Specifically, Kairos Future examined the following questions related to the future of outdoor experiences:

• Where are outdoor experiences heading? What trends can be identified?
• Who is the new outdoor traveler? What different “tribes” exist, and what are their desires, motivations, and expectations?
• What are the implications for product development, innovation, strategy, and marketing for outdoor businesses and destinations?

The first part of the study was based on an exploration of publicly available sources, including market research reports, media coverage, and academic articles, to provide background, context, and a historical perspective. The second part of the study was based on netnography.

Netnography is similar to ethnography—the systematic study of cultures from the participants’ own point of view — except that it focuses on people’s lives online. The core objective is the same: to understand what real people actually do and say about a specific topic, without predefined hypotheses. This approach makes it possible to identify patterns that might otherwise be missed.

Kairos Future used proprietary algorithms in its internally developed, at the time groundbreaking, AI-based analysis platform Dcipher to cast a wide net, dig deep into the data, and visualize the results in a compelling way.

Unlike traditional ethnography, netnography allows researchers to explore many more topics and vastly larger populations. Where time or budget constraints once limited sample sizes, new algorithms made it possible to analyze hundreds of thousands of internet users simultaneously. The result provided Stockholm Archipelago with a rich and multifaceted foundation for deep exploration.

RALLYING AROUND A TARGET GROUP, FOCUSING ON THEIR NEEDS

From the outset, it was clear that the nature-seeking visitor was the right focus for the archipelago. Yet major differences exist between those seeking adventure and those seeking tranquility—between visitors who find manicured park landscapes sufficiently stimulating and those who thrive in remote wilderness areas like Sarek.

The extensive analytical material enabled deep dives into these different “tribes,” their ideas, preferences, and attitudes toward nature experiences themselves as well as desired complementary activities. Models, visual summaries, and quotations that brought the statistics to life made the underlying motivations easier to understand.

Kairos Future (2019): Future of Outdoor
 

SUSTAINED FOCUS ON THE GOAL—WORLD-CLASS NATURE EXPERIENCES

Stockholm Archipelago concluded that while kayaking in strong winds outside Möja might get the adrenaline pumping, the strongest match between supply and demand lay in more relaxed nature experiences. Significant time and effort were invested to ensure that everyone involved truly understood the “DNA” of the selected target groups.

Over the years, partners in the initiative have focused on sustainable product and business development aimed at the chosen audience, working in close collaboration with the tourism industry while integrating the interests and needs of local communities into a coherent destination. Through sustained marketing efforts, the focus has remained on the selected “nature tribe,” regardless of geographic market, while also consistently addressing long-term issues critical to the archipelago’s visitor economy.

In November 2024, a major milestone was reached—a clear validation of the long-term and persistent effort. The Stockholm Archipelago Trail was inaugurated: a 270-kilometer hiking trail connecting several islands between Arholma and Landsort. The trail has gained international attention, including from National Geographic, which named the Stockholm Archipelago one of the world’s 25 best destinations for 2025.

“Simply being recognized by National Geographic is an achievement that does not happen by chance — it is the result of years of dedicated and professional collaboration among businesses and destination promoters working toward a shared goal. The value of international visibility should not be underestimated. I am incredibly proud that Kairos Future has been able to contribute to part of this journey and help lay the foundation for a sharp strategy,”

Johanna Danielsson, Senior Advisor and Futures Strategist at Kairos Future.

“Kairos Future’s analytical and strategic support laid the foundation for outstanding place development—we found the right match between market needs and our 30,000 islands! Together, these two factors were decisive for the successful strategic work we have remained committed to ever since. The analysis was clear, accessible, and incisive, guiding us toward the recognition we later received from National Geographic and others. We have gone from being an internationally unknown destination to multiplying the number of international visitors. It feels fantastic to have succeeded in putting Stockholm Archipelago on the global map as a world-class destination,”

Marie Östblom, Project Manager for Stockholm Archipelago.

“Clear analyses and strategies help us develop our assets—land, water, and buildings — in line with the needs of our target groups. With these as a foundation, we can work together with our entrepreneurs to develop our resources into the international, national, and regional arena for experiences that visitors are looking for. This, in turn, allows us to fulfill our statutory mission of preserving and making the archipelago accessible for current and future generations,”

Ulrika Palmblad-Wennergren, Director of Development at the Archipelago Foundation.

Would you like to learn more about this case, or about how to work with future-driven strategy development yourself? Contact Johanna Danielsson