Framing Coolcation - How Marketing Communication Constructs Finland's Summer Tourism Identity

Abstract

This thesis examines how Finland is represented as a summer destination in the era of coolcation – a growing climate-driven trend in which tourists seek cooler northern environments to escape rising temperatures and heatwaves. The study explores how climatic comfort, northernness, and coolness are presented in the context of Finland’s summer tourism identity. The study applies a qualitative visual discourse analysis to 30 social media publications produced by Visit Finland between 2019 and 2025. The analysis focuses on the interaction between visual and textual communication, symbolic narratives, affective representations, and destination identity construction. The theoretical framework combines destination identity theory, framing theory, and visual discourse perspectives. The findings show that coolcation is communicated primarily through symbolic and affective narratives emphasizing nature, water, spaciousness, tranquility, and environmental purity rather than through explicit climate discourse. Together, visual and textual elements position Finland as a climatically comfortable and emotionally restorative summer destination. The analysis also indicates that climatic comfort has become increasingly emphasized in more recent years. The study concludes that coolcation functions as a communicative and discursive phenomenon through which climatic attributes are translated into meaningful tourism experiences. Tourism marketing communication contributes to the construction of destination identity by framing northern environmental characteristics as attractive qualities in the context of a warming world.

Main research question: How does Finnish marketing communication construct and frame coolcation and Finland’s summer tourism identity?