Doing it the collaborative way – Collaboration as potential for sustainable tourism development? - A Greenlandic example

Description

The paper discusses the potential of collaboration for the daily practices in and future sustainable development of tourism by analyzing narratives of tourism practitioners within a case study approach of Greenland.
Up to date, multiple circumstances have made the Arctic destinations highly attractive for tourism and have led to a significant increase in tourists numbers over the past years. In the same way, this also applies to Greenland, but the tourism landscape there is not entirely prepared for it calling for future development.
The present tourism landscape does not offer an adequate range of tourism products, including transportation, accommodation, attractions, entertainment and experiences that tourists expect when visiting. Even though a tourism strategy (focusing on infrastructural development) by the government exists, the planning and building of larger airports and harbors does not automatically change the nature and scale of tourism according to the changing demands posed upon it.
In praxis, practitioners grant collaboration a significant value. By working together, they address challenges as well as embrace possibilities in order to face demands posed upon them. Furthermore, such a collaborative approach constitutes the base for sustainable tourism development through a bottom-up approach.
Based on relevant data from a previous project, from doctoral fieldwork and in line with the widely discussed theoretical notions of collaboration as positive tool for sustainable tourism development, this paper explores in how far (by granting collaborative activities more importance within the frame of development) such an approach inspires new ways of sustainable tourism development in the Arctic.

Period	3 Sept 2018 → 7 Sept 2018
Event title	UArctic Congress 2018
Event type	Conference
Location	Oulu & Helsinki, FinlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International