Rural Tourist Routes - resident’s views and inclusion

@Þórný Barðadóttir 2022

The ITRC has been awarded grant from the Icelandic Regional Development Institute’s Research Fund to conduct research on resident’s views and inclusion during the development of tourist roues. The research is titled Tourist routes through rural areas. Research on resident’s attitudes and inclusion during the process of routes development. 

The research is directed at the first branded Icelandic tourist route, the Arctic Coast Way. The route is designed to pull tourists off the beaten track of Icelandic tourism mobilities, the Icelandic Ring Road, to instead follow the coastline of northern Iceland. As with other tourist routs, the Arctic Coast Way aims to connect service centres and remote areas along its way and thereby increase the possibilities for rural areas towards tourism development.

The research is aimed at the social aspect of such routes. It is designed to capture the views of rural residents toward the route, on if and how they were included during the development of the route and if and how they regard the route as having the possibility to benefit their home area. The research focuses on two of the least populated areas on the route, Vatnsnes and Melrakkaslétta peninsulas. There, tourists partly pass through some of the most sparsely populated areas of the country, partly having to travel on poorly maintained gravel roads.

The purpose of the research is to capture the local view of the Arctic Coast Way and their inclusion in the development of the route and to assess how the residents view the route's impact and potentials for development of the local tourism sector and related industries.  In that, the research offers valuable knowledge into the understudied social aspect following the development of tourist routes through rural areas.

The research will be conducted in the summer and autumn of 2024. The project manager is Þórný Barðadóttir [thorny @ rmf.is].