Mid Sweden University

Nature-based attractions in the Swedish mountains, as in other similar areas in the Nordic and Arctic countries, have experienced a rapid growth in visitors, causing enhanced environmental damage, crowding, and pressure on infrastructure, resources, residents, and other land-users. Increased nature-based tourism creates a range of challenges leading to a need to balance benefits and challenges of tourism on communities and nature. This chapter aims to raise contemporary tourism governance challenges in the Swedish subarctic mountains by providing examples of conflicts of interests and different goals and agendas grounded in recent changes. Based on empirical material from interviews and stakeholder meetings, the chapter highlights the existing multi-actor complexity, implications of changing visitor patterns, and tourism impacts and responsibilities in governing those impacts. We end by discussing sustainability priorities, the public sector’s role in tourism development, strategic planning, collaboration, and responsibilities facing subarctic mountain communities.

While destination governance has grown into a mature research field, the dynamic analysis of destination governance transitions remains in its infancy. Therefore, this paper analyses and compares the destination governance transitions in the successful skiing destinations of Åre (Sweden), Whistler (Canada) and Dolomites (Italy). This multiple case study unveils development patterns in governance transitions and investigates the factors that trigger such transitions. In particular, the paper investigates whether leading skiing destinations get increasingly corporatised and ‘resortisised’. It also scrutinises what could trigger processes of ‘resortisation’ and focuses on the impact of crises. The study finds that governance is an adaptive phenomenon that transforms over time, but no strictly uniform transition pattern is detected. While differences arise from varying starting conditions and crises, the commonality is to be found in an apparent convergence of destination governance towards an intermediate stage of ‘socially licensed resorts’ with a minimum of community acceptance. 

Innovation is a critical factor for long-term economic development, also in tourism. Based on two commonly referred to modes of innovation (Jensen et al., 2007), that is, two types of innovation processes: Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI), this chapter examines the processes that lead to new products and services in a tourism context. Based on this, DUI seems to capture the essence of innovation in tourism enterprises better than STI, as it acknowledges the intrinsic nature of services and the typical size and working modes of touristic actors. The case study of Icehotel furthermore, illustrates how working in partnerships and in close cooperation with customers enhances the advantages of the DUI model. The handling of externally induced events and difficulties and the critical partnerships are better understood through the DUI than the STI lens. The DUI-framework leads to a more correct picture of tourism innovation, and could also provide a better guidance for policy processes in the field. 

Destination development has turned into a key issue in local and regional development. Not least many governments recognize the in-dustry’s potential for fostering economic growth and development. The tourist destination is often conceptualized as a complex network with several levels of interaction – both networks of actors within the destination, but also networks linking it to its surrounding environment with potential and actual customers, other destinations, government bodies and so on. It is hence the assumption here that we cannot fully understand destination development in a particular community unless we have a good understanding of how the key stakeholders interact.

By applying different network approaches that are united by and based upon a relational economic geography perspective to the study of destination development, we can widen our understanding of why some destinations struggle to survive and often decline, others maintain a threshold of success as tourist visiting areas, whereas there are still others, which exhibit a high level of competitiveness with local entrepreneurial milieus characterized by growth and long-term development.

More generally, this thesis deals with a traditional core issue in economic geography, i.e., to explain what it is that makes a place or region characterized by growth and devlopment. This thesis explores this issue, and expands our knowledge on the links between various kinds of network structures and growth in a destination context. This is conducted by case studies, foremost based on the Swedish mountain resort of Åre, but one also focusing on Icehotel in northern Sweden - to explore relational destination development and the significance of tourism networks.

Det finns stora skillnader mellan serviceproducerande företag och tillverkande industri, men ändå fortsätter vi många gånger att analysera servicesektorn – och däribland turistnäringen – utifrån den tillverkande industrin premisser. Risken är att resultatet leder till felaktiga slutsatser.

Turistnäringen beskrivs ofta som en eftersläntrare när det gäller innovationskapacitet. Men kan vi verkligen säga hur stor innovationsförmågan faktiskt är, när de modeller och analysverktyg som ofta används inte passar in på grund av turistföretagens storlek, karaktärsdrag och arbetsmetoder.

I den här populärvetenskapliga rapporten visar Sara Nordin och Anne-Mette Hjalager på andra sätt att identifiera, analysera och stödja innovationsprocesser i turistnäringen. Rapporten bygger på exempel från Icehotel. 

The aim of this study is to draw a wider picture of what constitutes the wellbeing category of tourism in the overarching, transnational geographical context of Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In addition, potential exploitation of special and even unique Nordic resources and advantages will be articulated in policy considerations for the emergence and support of a Nordic Wellbeing brand. Accordingly, the joint research will achieve a more profound understanding of the driving forces that could lead to the successful development of coherent wellbeing tourism in the Nordic region. The project involves researchers from each of the Nordic countries assigned the task to detail the innovative and entrepreneurial aspects of selected wellbeing tourism destinations. On the whole, the Nordic Wellbeing project takes an innovation perspective related to developing a particular Nordic content of wellbeing to be offered by tourism enterprises and destinations across the five Nordic countries.

This literature study reviews user-driven innovation and establishes a typology of its forms in a tourism context. Sixteen methods are distinguishable. They comprise situations where users are actively involved and methods where information is collected without direct user involvement. The nature and intensity of the dialogue between companies and their customers are addressed. Drawing on this existing research, the article concludes that there is still little comprehensive follow-up on user-driven innovation in tourism and its impact on quality improvements and assurance. Key areas for future studies are identified.

Learning OutcomesAfter reading this chapter, you should be able to:•Understand broad meanings and the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship;•Recognize and explain social, cultural, economic, institutional and regulatory contexts of different industries’ innovation systems;•Gain a conceptual understanding of innovation systems in tourism;•Understand the most recent trends in tourism entrepreneurship and innovation;•Understand the power structures and relations in the process of tourism development and innovation; and•Identify the key features of Nordic tourism and the innovative models adopted to boost its development and growth.