The softening of adventure tourism

ABSTRACT

As a consequence of diversification with regard to tourists and their perceptions on adventure tourism, there has been a supposed softening of Arctic adventure tourism. To determine if any such changes were occurring, a study of adventure tourism services from Finnish Lapland was undertaken. This study incorporated methodological triangulation and used two different data sets drawn from an on-site survey of tourists (n = 308) and thematic interviews with tourism actors (n = 5). With respect to Lapland, the study determined that a softening of adventure tourism and diversification in tourists’ groups was occurring. Specifically, the study found that tourists possessed inadequate competencies and knowledge regarding Arctic destinations; entrepreneurs demonstrated increased preparedness to pull out mid-activity and that there was a need for multi-skilled, service-oriented actors within destinations. Subsequently, more research is needed on the soft dimensions of tourism in the Arctic, in order to address, for example, what kind of competencies are needed from different actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Adventure tourism
• soft adventure
• Arctic
• nature-based tourism
• Finnish Lapland

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway under research project “Winter: New Turns in Arctic Winter Tourism”. We thank the master students in the University of Lapland for their contribution to the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Outi Rantala http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2340-9522

Ville Hallikainen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5384-8265

Seija Tuulentie http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4417-1752

Notes

1 Muonio differs from the other tourist resorts – instead of being constructed of one clear ski resort it consists of two small ski resorts, one main tourist resort and several villages.