NS34 Session 30

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Title: Creating Tourism from Below Zero: Why, How, and for Whom

Organisers: Carsten Humlebæk and Viktor Smith

Affiliation: Copenhagen Business School

Description

In many peripheral, rural, and culturally under-recognized areas, the challenge for tourism development is not overtourism or capacity management. Rather, it is the absence of a consolidated narrative of what the place has to offer – both among potential visitors and many locals – of a clear coalition of actors ready to take the lead in materializing any tourism opportunities, and of access to stable funding and revenue streams.

We have earlier termed this a “below zero” scenario, understood as a situation where the challenge is not just to move beyond a zero baseline – with orientations and stakeholder alignments already in place – but to identify and qualify that very baseline. At the same time, the scenario is often accompanied by a strong sense among some key actors that there is “something there” that could be taken much further and create substantial value for residents, potential visitors, cultural heritage preservation, and local economy. Arguably, precisely such scenarios can hold a strong potential for genuinely transformative innovation.

This session invites contributions which explore how examples of such below-zero destinations can move from fragmentation to a shared direction without compromising social, economic, cultural and environmental sustainability. How are such places best communicated and branded while staying faithful to the identities experienced by local actors? Which sorts of business models, if any, are feasible under conditions of uncertainty and partial alignment? How could local communities ideally become both primary beneficiaries and active drivers of emerging trajectories? Who defines what “good” developments means in such early-stage contexts?

With a view to insights gained in European initiatives such as INCULTUM, SECreTour, CROCUS, CULTURALITY, TOURAL – and related Nordic contexts including Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland – the session aims to advance the theoretical underpinning of, and the generation of actionable tools for meeting, the challenges just outlined.