Navigating Sustainability: Meaning and Manifestation of Sustainable Coastal Tourism in Northwest Iceland

Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson (), Laufey Haraldsdóttir () and Jessica Aquino ()
Additional contact information
Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson: University of Iceland
Laufey Haraldsdóttir: Hólar University
Jessica Aquino: Hólar University

Chapter Chapter 2 in Nordic Coastal Tourism, 2024, pp 17-32 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Iceland in recent years has become an increasingly popular tourist destination. Between 2010 and 2018 the number of international tourist arrivals more than quadrupled and tourism accounted for more than 8% of the island’s GDP. While the rapid increase in tourism boosted the national economy it has brought many challenges in terms of sustainable development, including environmental degradation of the most popular destinations and pressure on the local housing market. The current tourism policy in Iceland has the objective of being at the forefront of sustainable tourism development internationally by 2030. While most will agree that this is an attractive goal it remains uncertain what it means in practice. Historically tourism development in Iceland has been driven by entrepreneurs working within a loose regulatory framework. While this may have benefitted entrepreneurial dynamics the downside is an overall lack of coherent vision of how to develop tourism of value, for both residents and visitors, in sustainable ways. This chapter critically explores tourism sustainability concerns and conceptualisations in the Northwest region of Iceland, typically perceived as a “cold” spot in tourism in the country, but in recent years there have been ongoing efforts for costal tourism development in the area. Based on qualitative approach, our case study explores how key actors in the regional government and tourism support system understand tourism sustainability. Secondly, how they perceive the links between the national tourism policy (that aims a leading in sustainability in 2030) and the work in the regional development towards coastal tourism sustainability.

Keywords: Sustainability; Policy; Iceland; Governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-73187-7_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031731877

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-73187-7_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().