Nature and culture-based resources

Outdoor recreation and environmentalism

 Daniel Wolf-Watz thesis deals with social and spatial perspectives on the relationship between outdoor recreation (including nature based tourism) and environmentalism. The research is part of the program Outdoor recreation in change.

For more information, contact Daniel Wolf-Watz.

Critical success factors and obstacles for nature tourism business

 Christine Lundberg's research focuses on identifying critical success factors and constraints for nature-based tourism entrepreneurs.

For more information, contact Christine Lundberg

Economic Values of Outdoor Recreation

 This project involves an empirical measurement of outdoor recreation economic values in Sweden, where the economic expenditures, values and impacts of participation in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism is estimated.

For more information, contact Peter Fredman.

Outdoor Recreation in Change

 Outdoor Recreation in Change is an interdisciplinary, national research programme for the study of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism in Sweden. The overall aim of the programme is to present a broad picture of the dynamics of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism in Sweden.

For more information, contact Peter Fredman or visit our website www.friluftsforskning.se

 Knowing the visitor in planning – conflicts and zoning in Swedish coastal areas

 Rosemarie Ankres thesis includes two case studies, Blekinge and Luleå archipelagos, where I have conducted several questionnaire surveys and interviews. Because of the sensitive nature and culture areas, the Swedish archipelagos become arenas for a variety of different stakeholders, whose needs, interests and experiences in some cases go in different directions. This may cause conflicts of, for example, conservation, accessibility, usage, development and management of the coastal landscapes. Noise is especially investigated in my work. To be able to introduce tourism and outdoor life better in the Swedish comprehensive plans, it is important to be able to identify but also handle these conflicts. Zoning is thereby analyzed as a potential management tool in Swedish coastal areas.

For more information, contact Rosemarie Ankre.

 Success Factors and Constraints among Nature-Based Tourism Entrepreneurs

Christine Lundberg studies critical sucsess factors and constraints för nature-based tourism businesses enterprise. Her research project aims at identifying critical success factors (CSFs) and constraints for nature-based tourism business enterprise. CSFs has been defined as ”the limited number of areas in which results, if the are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance”. Data is collected by means of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Findings may be used by tourism entrepreneurs as well as policy makers in the development of competitive advantage and improved business success in nature-based tourism business enterprise.

For more information, contact Christine Lundberg

Friluftslivets ekonomiska relationer

Detta projekt omfattar en empirisk mätning av friluftslivets ekonomiska värden i Sverige där ekonomiska utgifter, värdering och effekter av deltagande i friluftsliv samt naturbaserad turism skattas.

För mer information, kontakta Peter Fredman.

New Challenges for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas: A Landscape Perspective from Sweden

For more information, contact Peter Fredman, Sandra Wall Reinius och Daniel Leaven

Destination development

The Tourism Labour Conundrum: Agenda for New Research in the Geography of Hospitality Workers

In this review, we argue that the study of tourism and hospitality labour geography must be re-addressed since it has, with few exceptions, only superficially been treated within the overall economic geography of tourism. The resurrection of the labour theme is especially important since the tourism and hospitality sector is advocated as a significant job generator in many regions worldwide. However, jobs in this industry are often low-paid, low-skilled, temporary and/or part-time. These include the numerous lower-end employment positions within the hospitality sector where limited training appears to be the norm and long-term career opportunities are few. The hospitality workforce at this lower tier of the employment spectrum predominately consists of women, immigrants and young people. We argue that these individuals’ work is first and foremost reproductive; in other words, these hospitality workers’ tasks are associated with the housewife´s unpaid tasks within the home. Furthermore, staff turnover in this sector is notoriously high. Taken together this leads us to suggest a focus on the socio-spatial labour mobility and the division of labour from an intersectional perspective (sex, race and class) in an attempt to better understand the complex relations and processes at work expressed in a tourism and hospitality labour geography.

Link to the article

For more information, contact Kristina Zampoukos or Dimitri Ioannides.

Knowledge-driven tourism development
This project consists of five  partial project, which are linked together by a common focus on innovation in services. The differnt projects focus on tourism trends, pop culture, events, tourism and labor. The project are funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the County Council of Jämtland, and Mid Sweden University and will run over three years (2011-2013).  

For more information, contact Bo Svensson

All-inclusive tourism 

The trend toward all-inclusive and other pre-planned tourist destinations: does geography matter?

For more information, contact  Sandra Wall Reinius,   Kristina Zampoukosoch Dimitri Ioannides

Foodscape

This research project focus on smallscale småskalig matproduktion och matupplevelser i Jämtland.

For more information, contact Sandra Wall Reinius, Daniel Laven, Maria Lexhagen och Christine Lundberg

Tourism in the experience world

PopCulTour

2011-01-01: PopCulTour is a research project that focuses on how value is created in popular (pop) culture tourism, i.e. tourism induced by for example film, television and literature. The research project employs both a destination and a consumer perspective and identifies pop culture tourism characteristics, pop culture tourists' motives, values and intentions as well as positive and negative effects for pop culture tourism destinations and stakeholders.

For more information, visit our webpage or contact: Christine Lundberg and Maria Lexhagen

 K&K project: Engineering the knowledge destination
A research project financed by the Knowledge Foundation (K&K Stiftelsen) started in fall 2011. Key actors of the destination of Åre, like SkiStar and the destination management organisation, Are AB, jointly engage along with researchers from ETOUR in the co-production and implementation of a powerful Destination Management Information System (DMIS). Although huge amounts of customer-based data are widespread in tourism destinations (e.g. data bases save transaction and survey data, respectively, web servers store tourists’ website navigation), these valuable knowledge sources typically remain unused. Customer-based data sources in tourism destinations The K&K project resolves this deficiency by developing, implementing and testing a DMIS that enables tourism managers the de-centralized ad-hoc generation of strategically relevant knowledge that is crucial to strengthen the drivers behind destination success, namely economic performance, marketing effectiveness and the quality of visitor experience. 

Read more or contact Matthias Fuchs and Maria Lexhagen

Sucessful events

Event tourism have become the subject of an increasing level of both academic and government interest, and are seen as important components of place marketing and destination competitiveness. Events often generate significant revenue and can contribute social and cultural benefits to host regions and countries. Research on event and event development have during the last years been an important subject and since 2011, event the leading event researcher Donald Getz are linked to Etour as a visiting professor.

Current events projects at the moment are:

Peak Experiences

The purpose of Peak Experiences is to create a deeper knowledge about visitors. The project uses GPS technology to track visitors' patterns and experiences. The research project was developed in collaboration with companies such as Biathlon World Championship, Skistar Åre, Åre Destination AB, Holiday Club Åre and Storsjöyran. 

For more information, contact Robert Pettersson och Bo Svensson

Event experiences and event design (PhD project)

Anders Gunnervall is studing the meaning of the unexpected event experience, and how to design events that give rise to such experiences.

For more information, contact Anders Gunnervall

Event and Arena development
This research project is part of the regional innovation system and Peak Innovation. 

For more information, contact Robert Pettersson

Innovative events and experiences.
 This project focuses on customer-driven event development, planning for events, experiences and learning processes. The project is funded by the European Union. 

For more information, contact Robert Pettersson

CBIT- Customer-based innovation in Tourism

The goal is to identify improvement and innovation areas in tourism destinations. According to the knowledge-based theory of the firm the first project pillar focuseson the retrieval of marketing intelligence from very large data bases through methods of artificial intelligence. Project partners Skistar Åre, Åre Destination AB, Holiday Club Åre, The Business Informatics Group, University of Applied Studies Ravensburg-Weingarten (Tyskland), Institute of Applied Informatics, University of Klagenfurt (Österrike). 

For more information, contact Matthias Fuchs

A value co-creation perspective on the customer-based brand equity model for tourism destinations. (PhD project)

For more information abstract or contact Tatiana Chekalina

The marketing performance chain in tourism organizations: User-generated content as information source for decision making in customer relationship management (CRM) (PhD project)

For more information, contact Thomas Pinthal