This site has a lot of writing on it. Most of it is aimed at researchers, tourism boards, and people who run businesses. That kind of writing has its place, but it’s not where most of the people who actually live here would start.
If you live in Levi, work in Levi, or have family who do — this page is for you.
I am not from Levi. I moved here with my family in 2024, which means I’ve lived through one full winter and one full summer. There are people in this village who have lived here for forty years. They know things I will never know. This whole project depends on people like that being willing to tell me when I’m wrong.
What follows is a short, direct note for some of the specific groups whose lives are shaped most directly by what tourism is becoming. If you don’t see yourself in any of them, scroll to the end — there’s a section for you there too.
If you rent out a cabin, an apartment, or a room
You are most of the accommodation supply in this region. There are more beds in privately owned cabins and apartments in Levi than in all the hotels combined.
Most of those beds are now booked through Booking.com, Airbnb, or a small number of platforms based far away from here. Those platforms take 15 to 25 percent of every booking. Money that used to stay in this village now leaves it.
You have probably noticed:
- Bookings increasingly come through one or two platforms
- The platforms keep changing the rules and you keep adapting
- It is harder to take direct bookings than it used to be
- Cleaning, maintenance, and turnover costs keep going up
- Your visitors don’t know your name — they know the platform’s
You are not doing anything wrong by being on these platforms. They are how visitors find this place now. The question is whether the way it currently works is the only way it can work — and whether there are practical things small accommodation owners can do, together, to keep more of the value here.
If you have thoughts on what would actually help, I want to hear from you.
If you work in a hotel, restaurant, or shop
You see things from the inside that nobody else sees. You know which weeks are mad and which are quiet. You know what the visitors are like and what they ask for. You know which managers are good and which are not. You know what wages have done over the last few years. You know what housing has done.
Most of the strategic conversations about tourism in Levi happen in rooms you are not invited to. The people in those rooms make decisions that affect your hours, your income, your housing, and your future, often without consulting you.
This project is not going to fix that on its own. But it is trying to make visible something that is rarely written down: that the people who actually deliver tourism in Levi — the cleaners, the cooks, the servers, the receptionists, the lift operators — are the ones who absorb the cost of every system change that happens at the level above you.
If something matters to you that nobody is talking about, I want to know what it is.
If you build, fix, or fit out the cabins
You are building the tourism Levi will have in five and ten years. You have seen the plans. You know who is buying. You know what’s being built and for whom.
You also know how hard it is to find somewhere reasonable to live in Levi yourself. You know what construction costs are doing. You know which projects are being built fast and which are being built well. You know which of them are for locals and which are for someone who will visit twice a year.
Construction is one of the clearest places to see what a destination is choosing to become, because what gets built is what will be there in twenty years. The people closest to that decision are not the architects or the developers. It’s the people on the site every day.
If there’s something you’ve noticed that the strategic conversations are missing — about what’s being built, who it’s for, or what it costs the village — I want to know.
If you guide, drive, cook, clean, or serve
You are the experience visitors actually have. The marketing brochures are not what they remember. The husky tour, the meal at the small restaurant, the driver who picked them up at the airport, the person at the front desk who fixed their problem at eleven at night — that’s what they take home.
The same forces that are reshaping accommodation are reshaping experience work. Larger operators consolidate. Standardised products win out over individual ones. The pace gets faster. The relationships get thinner. Something that used to be a craft starts to feel like a process.
You probably know whether this is happening in your specific corner of Levi tourism better than anyone. If it is, I’d like to understand the texture of it. If it isn’t — if your part of the work has stayed substantive — I’d like to understand how, and why, and what protects it.
If you live here and don’t work in tourism at all
You came here, or stayed here, for reasons that have nothing to do with what visitors are looking for. You are a teacher, a nurse, a council worker, a retiree, a parent. You came for the place itself.
The people most affected by what tourism is becoming are often not the people in tourism. They are the people who can’t find a flat to rent because the flats are short-term lets. They are the people whose children will grow up in a village whose character is no longer in local hands. They are the people who notice that the village is louder now, busier, more expensive, less recognisable.
You are part of this story even if you don’t think of yourself that way. Your view of what is happening here matters at least as much as the view of anyone running a business.
If you have lived here long enough to remember what it used to be like, that memory is data. If you can describe — even in one sentence — what you wish would not be lost, I want to hear it.
What I am asking
This is a short list:
- If something on this page describes your experience, I would value hearing about it directly
- If something on this page misses your experience, I would value being told what’s wrong
- If you know someone who would have a useful perspective and isn’t likely to read a website like this, please pass on what you’ve read here in your own words
I am not asking for agreement. I am asking for correction, challenge, and honesty. The project is better with more hands on it.
A note on language
This page is in English. Many of the people it most addresses do not read English comfortably. The Finnish version is being prepared. If you would be willing to help review the Finnish translation when it is ready, please let me know.
Author: Colin Harrison, Levi resident since 2024. Contact: colin@levifinland.com This is one entry point to the Levi Tourism Model project. The fuller research is at the homepage. The methodology is at Research Methodology.