This paper develops eight propositions regarding internationalization processes for small and medium-sized tourism firms (SMTFs). A SMTF is defined here as a company that produces a tourist attraction locally, its product based on local resources. This means that SMTFs rely on customers seeking them on the firms' home market. This has implications for the SMTF's expansion into new markets and, consequently, its internationalization process. In a study based on the propositions, the internationalization processes of ten Swedish SMTFs were investigated. It was found that some SMTFs internationalized slowly; initially displayed a reactive and emergent approach, and entered markets that were culturally and geographically close. Born global SMTFs, however, searched more actively for opportunities, also in more remote markets. Intermediaries were the dominant mode throughout the process for all firms. Over time, most of the SMTFs developed a more strategic and deliberate approach in their selection of counterparts and new markets. The support of a destination management organization was important initially for some of the firms.
A significant number of the jobs that are found in the tourism sector are relatively low-paying positions. The share of part-time employment is also large. This study focuses on individuals who have remained in the sector for many years and are making a career in tourism. The analysis is based on a balanced panel consisting of individuals who, between 2002 and 2011, lived and worked full time in the tourism industry in central Sweden. Data were analyzed using three different models; a cross-sectional OLS model was utilized for the analysis of the data from 2011 and both a pooled OLS model as well as a fixed-effect model were used in the analysis of data between 2002 and 2011. The fixed-effect model is important because it captures differences in ability among the individuals included in the study. The results show a lower income for individuals in the tourism sector compared to the rest of the economy. However, the results of the panel data estimations indicate that the effect of education is stronger for individuals in the tourism sector and that wage levels in this sector is more equal between the men and women, compared to the rest of the economy.
This study focuses on the local resource that a mine represents and analyses the role of stakeholders and institutions during the development of heritage tourism. The paper aims to examine the role of stakeholders and their interpretation of heritage in the management process in the case of the Great Copper Mountain World Heritage Site in Falun, Sweden. The paper focuses on local strategies for developing heritage tourism in which concepts of institutions and path dependency in terms of inherited social and economic structures can shed light on more general local development processes. The empirical material consists of interviews, official documents and marketing material. While the goal of many of the interviewed stakeholders is to promote tourism development, a common view is often lacking in terms of what the tourist product is or how the role of the World Heritage Site can be interpreted with regard to tourism activities. There are also sceptical voices regarding the development of activities and attractions devoted to entertainment without educational purposes. The marketing texts focus on the landscape and the 17th century system of production, which further supports the view that the preservation of the remnants from this period will be prioritised in contemporary management policies. The present paper interprets this concept as an indication of the strength of the institutions and ideas that promote the importance of education and historical facts related to mining communicated by former mining-related stakeholders as well as by heritage organisations, including UNESCO.
The diversification of farming towards more service-intensive businesses enables innovation and competitiveness within the farming sector. However, running a hospitality and tourism business significantly differs from farming and requires different competencies. It entails face-to-face customer relationships and creating experiences based on the identity of the place and the entrepreneurs. By inviting in guests/customers, the farm is transformed from primarily an agricultural production place to one that produces experiences and services. This paper aims to analyse and discuss how women engaged in farm tourism perform rural and gender identities by producing experiences and services, and how these performances may reproduce or challenge traditional rural and gender identities. The study is based on interviews with women in the two regions Dalarna and Uppland who run tourism businesses on working farms. The interviews show that the entrepreneurs must cope with tensions and conflicts between agricultural production and tourism at the farms in terms of not only practical work and duties, but also how gendered farming identities are performed.
This paper reports the findings of a natural field experiment in which cross-country skiers had the option to use their mobile phones to call in a donation to fund ski track preparations. This paper takes the Right of Public Access as given and investigates the extent to which donations or voluntary contributions can be used to finance recreational infrastructure. The purpose of the study was to look at how different types of bonus services and offers, as well as the introduction of a trail pass, affected the willingness of individuals to make donations to ski track preparations at a Swedish ski resort. The study’s main finding was that it is not possible to rely on a simple voluntary approach when introducing a new system for financing recreational infrastructure using micropayments and new IT services.
Understanding the demand and the economic impact for a hallmark event is crucial knowledge not only for the event managers but also for the public planners of the host region, especially from the viewpoint of welfare evaluation. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly to estimate the demand for a music event using two non-market valuation techniques; stated choice and travel cost method (TCM), and secondly to compare the welfare measures estimated from the two methods and discuss their relevance for event policy and management. We use survey data collected from 1005 visitors to the Peace & Love music festival held in Borlänge, Sweden, in 2012. The survey contains questions about the actual behaviour of the respondents such as expenditure patterns and travel behaviour but also a stated choice experiment (SCE). The latter asks the respondents to choose between different scenarios with varying levels of price, number of visitors and length of the festival in days. These data allow us to estimate consumer surplus for the event by applying both the TCM and SCE. The findings of our study are that the price effect, as expected, is negative and significant, more people attending the festival decreases the propensity to attend while longer duration of the festival increases the propensity to attend. This paper contributes to the literature on event impact analysis by highlighting the potential for using stated choice data on visitor preferences in combination with actual visitor data to understand current and future economic impact of an event.
This paper examines how population change among young adults in rural areas is affected when tourism is the dominant industry. The relation between tourism and population change is often implicitly assumed but has not been well examined on a broader societal level. Existing studies have indicated that the effect of tourism on population change is limited in geographical range, and therefore a fine geographical resolution is useful. This analysis is based on yearly information on each individual who resided in Sweden in any year between 1990 and 2010, with 100-metre grid cells as the finest geographical resolution. Since young adults constitute a large part of all migration that takes place, they are the focus of this study. The findings show that the net population change among young adults is clearly more positive in tourism-dominated areas (TDAs) than in non-TDAs, and this becomes more significant the more remote the areas. Further, there is a better gender balance and a younger population in TDAs. Stayers and return migrants can partly explain the positive population change in TDAs, but as shown in previous research, there is a higher turnover of population in TDAs, and in-migration seems to be the key to positive population change.
In this study, we consider a dynamic demand model for international tourism. The model is used to estimate separate demand functions for hotel and cottage visitors from different countries, with a multivariate structural time series model. Among other things, the estimated models are used to simulate the effects on international tourism demand in Sweden of an increase in the value added tax on typical tourism products. The results reveal that the price sensitivity differs considerably between various visitor groups. The largest effect is found for Norwegian visitors, while there is no significant effect for Danish ones. The forecast accuracy of the demand model is also evaluated. The results indicate that a pure structural time series model performs as well as a model with explanatory variables. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This paper analyses the importance of tourism employment for in-migration to Malung/Salen and alvdalen, two rural municipalities hosting two major tourist destinations in the southern Swedish mountains. It uses micro-data from a database that includes, among many other variables, residence and employment information. This work is explorative and uses longitudinal data that permit examining individuals and go beyond simple net employment figures to show that many in-migrants to these municipalities are employed in tourism and constitute part of what is defined as the "creative workforce" in the local labour market. In this sense, tourism employment is found to be a pull factor for in-migration of highly skilled and well-paid people.
The purpose of this paper is to showcase how Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) can be used to assist in collecting data of relevance for planning at a tourism destination in general and, specifically how PPGIS data can assist in the early stages of transportation planning. In this paper, we report on a PPGIS study in Sälenfjällen, the largest ski tourism destination in Sweden. Our analysis uses data from 162 visitors sampled on-site using online and paper-based questionnaires containing survey questions and mapping tasks. We use the survey and mapped results from Sälenfjällen to discuss the opportunities and challenges of using PGGIS for this planning purpose. We conclude that, despite of various challenges like low response rates and sampling issues, PPGIS provides the possibility to collect rich information in terms of survey results and mapped values. This is important in understanding a transportation challenge at the early stages of planning, namely the initiation stage. Our study adds to a growing literature exploring the use of PPGIS in the field of tourism and recreation. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first to use this approach in a tourism-transport context in a Nordic destination.
The aim of this study is to investigate what sets in motion the process that results in product innovations in rural micro-tourism firms. The point of departure is to place entrepreneurship as a process that precedes innovations. This approach enables the application of the opportunity-based perspective, on the study of 40 new tourism products. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with owner-managers of micro-tourism firms in rural Sweden. The focus of the analysis is on the formation of the entrepreneur–opportunity nexus. The findings suggest that in forming the nexus, three types of forces are at play: internal, supply chain dynamics and reaction to changes. The notion of triggering forces adds a new dimension to the study of entrepreneurial opportunities. The theoretical contribution of this paper to tourism research is twofold. First, it points at the generating moment as a step towards theorising innovations, and second, the findings contribute to the growing knowledge base about entrepreneurial behaviour in micro-tourism firms in rural areas. Finally, in a practical manner, the findings of this study should encourage tourism entrepreneurs to invest in exploring the value chain, regard tourists as sources of knowledge and be attentive to changes in circumstances.