“Getting enough and giving enough to the Members”

SPA VILNIUS joined the SCCL three years ago. Ever since, they have been a very active member and cooperated with the Chamber for several events. Lina Nosevic, corporate clients manager at SPA VILNIUS, shared her perspective on how SPA VILNIUS as a business can work together with the Chamber in a way that is beneficial and creates value for both parties.

Driven by the need to find a new market and clients, SPA VILNIUS decided to focus on Sweden and consequently joined the SCCL in 2015. In these three years, there are some things that Lina has learned about working with the Chamber.

1. For a member company, “it is important that one person is responsible for being a contact person to the Chamber”. This person should follow the Chamber´s activities (including events, new members, etc.) that are relevant for the member company, otherwise it is impossible to make use of the Chamber´s offer efficiently.
2. Each company should be aware of what their expectations of the membership with the Chamber are. For SPA VILNIUS, it developed step-by-step: first of all, they had to learn how to work with the Swedish market. Establishing connections on several of the Chamber´s events helped with that.The next challenge was to become attractive and connect to other members; to this end, SPA VILNIUS decided to launch special offers for members, and to organize wellness and health seminars. The first events together with the Chamber already resulted in a few requests.
3. There are two major benefits of the membership for SPA VILNIUS. The first one is that it provides a platform for visibility: “all members are potential clients for us”. And secondly, through their special relationship, members can share their experiences with each other. Next to that, the SCCL supports SPA VILNIUS in their goal to make Sweden one of their five or six priority markets.

Lina concludes that after the three years of membership, not much has changed for SPA VILNIUS per se. However, the membership considerably helped to comprehend the Swedish market: that Swedish travel agencies barely arrange journeys for individual clients, but much more for groups instead.

All in all, Lina understands that it is difficult to manage all 80 members with each of them having different orientations, expectations, and people in charge of communicating with the Chamber, but altogether, “yes, we are happy that we are a member. We are getting enough and we are giving enough for the members. Now, we are trying to organize at least four activities per year together with the Chamber.”