A Research Agenda For Arctic Tourism

With the Arctic firmly in the spotlight of global public attention due to the current climate crisis and increased access to its natural resources, this timely Research Agenda addresses the key issues facing the Arctic, such as a warming climate and tourism in the North.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Sustainable Tourism and Natural Resource Conservation in the Polar Regions" that was published in Resources

Available online: https://pub.norden.org/temanord2022-516/ The report presents findings from a workshop where researchers, students, tourism industry representatives, policy makers and entrepreneurs from the Arctic discussed the challenges of overtourism, the impact of COVID-19 and visions for restarting tourism. A key for sustainable management of tourism is that actors are aware that they are part of a wide ranging tourism system that affects how they can tackle ensuing crisis or challenges such as overtourism and undertourism. The COVID-19 hit tourism hard across the Arctic although there are also regional differences. The pandemic revealed the vulnerability of the tourism product and opened a space for reconsidering tourism growth and the negative impacts of tourism on climate, biodiversity and communities. The report argues for the need to build tourism based on tourism-community collaboration.

Available online: https://pub.norden.org/temanord2020-529/ Tourism has grown in many Arctic peripheries of northern Europe and North America, particularly among international markets interested in unique Arctic nature and culture-based assets. In this context, urban places have remained relatively neglected. The report brings together case studies from several northern peripheries to illustrate the diversity of urban Arctic tourism and to identify implications for sustainable tourism development across the North. The case studies indicate that the Arctic dimensions of urban tourism are not always self-evident and tourism has not developed in relation to the northern culture of these places. However, in a global competition for capital and people, urban places seem to be increasingly using the Arctic as a way to boost local economies and reimage their places in order to achieve individual, local, regional, and national development goals.