News

The Organisation “Friends of Vatnajökull“ has decided to grant the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre for the research project “Glacier Tourism and Climate Change in Iceland“ with two million ISK. The research project began in autumn 2013 and the researcher working on the project is Johannes T. Welling. The central goal of the project is to develop an adaptation strategy for glacier based tourism in Iceland to cope with the potential impacts of climate change and climate variability, based on a set of future scenarios.

The ITRC received a grant from the EU Leonardo lifelong learning programme in collaboration with colleagues from Poland and Greece to develop learning outcomes for service training in areas of great natural value. Domestically the ITRC collaborated with Hólar University College and the Travel Industry Association to develop these learning outcomes.

Wednesday the 10th September the director of the ITRC delivered a keynote at the 3rd Nordic Rural Studies conference held in Trondheim, Norway 8th to 10th September. The title of the keynote was: Tending to tourism. Tourism's role in thriving and declining communities.

The Programme at the ITRC for autumn 2014 is quite eventful as in previous years.

The Icelandic Tourism Research Centre hosted its third research seminar beginning June at Hólar University College. The first ITRC research days were held in Höfn in autumn 2012, the second in autumn 2013 in Húsavík and building on the success of these a spring seminar was added, but the fourth research seminar is to be held this autumn around Reykjavík.

The award for 2013 went to Paavo Olavi Sonninen who wrote the dissertation "Tour Guide Competencies and Training Needs. Focus on the tour guides of Arctic Adventures". The award was given at the annual meeting of The Icelandic Tourist Industry Association on April 10th 2014 at the Grand Hotel in Reykjavík.

Two peer-reviewed articles and one conference paper were published this month detailing Icelandic tourism research in the Nordic and international context.

For the third time the ITRC hosts its annual micro-conference at he University of Iceland on 24th October 2013. The theme is on the state of knowledge on tourism in Iceland.

In August 2013 the publishing house Forlagið, published a book on tourism in Iceland written by Edward H. Huijbens and Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson.