NS34 Session 27

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Title: Pay-Per-View Tourism and the Politics of Parking Fees

Organisers: Ari Martin Laakso, Guðrun Þóra Gunnarsdóttir and Gaute Emil Svensson

Affiliation: University of Lapland, Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, UiT, The Arctic University of Norway

Description

The rapid expansion of parking fees, particularly in nature-based and high-traffic tourism areas, has led to concerns about the emergence of a “pay-per-view” model of tourism, where access to landscapes and public spaces becomes increasingly monetised. While such fees may support infrastructure maintenance, environmental stewardship and public services, they also raise fundamental questions about fairness, legitimacy and the boundary between public governance and private entrepreneurship.

This session examines parking fees as part of a broader landscape of Tourism Revenue Transfers (TRTs), including accommodation taxes, visitor levies and access charges. We explore how these mechanisms function not merely as fiscal tools, but as governance instruments emerging in periods of institutional transition. By requiring registration, enabling data collection, differentiating rates and influencing behaviour, such instruments may reshape how tourism is regulated, financed and legitimised.

At the same time, the politics surrounding parking fees reveal deeper tensions concerning ownership, access and value capture in tourism landscapes. Do parking fees and related revenue mechanisms strengthen public governance and environmental stewardship, or do they facilitate new forms of private value extraction and commodification of access to nature? This question invites critical reflection on whether revenue-based approaches contribute to more equitable and sustainable tourism systems, or risk reinforcing rent-seeking dynamics and intensifying pressure on high-value natural areas.

We invite contributions that engage with the session’s thematic focus from diverse theoretical, empirical and methodological perspectives.