Cruise tourism along the Norwegian coastline: How can localagents enhance the generation of value at the local level?

Recently, the growth in cruise tourism has generally been higher than other forms of tourism both world–wide and in Norway. The cruise industry is dependent upon having good offers for their passengers. This sets demands on the tourist agencies’ products along the sailing route, both in terms of product quality and organization (product packaging, information, transport). Along the Norwegian coast, there will be a large potential linked to the development of niche products related to exploring tourism, adventure and nature-based tourism, where the interaction between nature and culture also is an important element. The cruise lines, ports and cities/towns are strongly associated with each other regarding tourism. However, few if any studies have looked into what destinations and small and medium sized businesses can do to create and increase value from cruise arrivals – the primary objective for this study. It is difficult to find another tourist industry that presents such a challenging relation between local and global, uniqueness and standardization, and such a complex array of players directly contributing to the final product (Gui and Rosso , 2011). Thus, the cruise industry offers a particular vantage point to understand the evolution of global tourism, innovation and value creation, and what it demands of national industry players.This study provide novel insights into the different aspects of how cruise tourism can contribute to the larger perennial value creation on land through better organization and development of sub-contractor systems. We emphasize the interaction between industry actors (cruise companies, ports, tourism enterprises), R&D actors and public authorities supported by new insights about cruise tourists' preferences to achieve an innovative triple-helix effect. By focusing on the interdependency of these three perspectives we seek to generate knowledge relevant to practitioners such as managers of tourist firms/sub-contractors, ports, and cruise companies; policy makers, such as tourism authorities and agencies, county and municipality administrations and others wishing to increase the possibility for more successful exploitation of ports of call by cruise ship along the Norwegian coast line.

Til publikasjon: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3769908 | Publiseringsår: 2016 | Tidsskrift: