NS34 Session 33

 

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Title: Rural Drive Tourism: Roads as Experience, Practice and Planning

Organisers: Eyrún Jenný Bjarnadóttir, Reidar J. Mykletun and Tarja Tuulia Salmela

Affiliation: Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, University of Stavanger, Arctic University of Norway 

 

Description

This session focuses on rural drive tourism from the perspective of movement rather than destinations alone. Instead of seeing roads mainly as access to attractions, we approach them as spaces where tourism happens, through driving, enjoying, learning, stopping, negotiating routes, encountering others and making ongoing decisions along the way.

We are interested in how routes are planned, branded and governed, but also how they are used in practice. This includes how travellers balance transport and experience, how they follow, adapt or avoid suggested routes and how navigation tools, information and in-car activities shape attention to surroundings and engagement with place.

We also welcome perspectives on safety and risk, including preparedness, driving cultures and accidents as well as everyday frictions between visitors, residents and different road users. Finally, we invite contributions that look at roads in a longer perspective: their histories, their role in regional development and how infrastructure, planning and sustainability ambitions influence mobility and experiences in rural areas.

In the context of a changing tourism landscape, rural roads also become sites of transition. Shifts towards electrification, new mobility patterns and changing expectations of sustainability reshape both infrastructure and everyday travel practices. Studying drive tourism therefore offers a concrete way to understand how tourism adapts (or struggles to adapt) to broader environmental and societal change. The session aims to bring together different approaches to better understand the road not only as infrastructure, but as a lived and negotiated tourism space.

 

Abstracts

Title: Passion at the Intersection of Drive and Car Tourism in a Rural Context
Author: Helene Maristuen, Western University of Applied Sciences

Car tourism is understood as a sub-category of drive tourism, where the vehicle itself is the primary motivation and focus of travel experience. In contrast, in general drive tourism, the mode of travel—typically the private car is central, whether the traveler has a particular enthusiasm for vehicles or not. Both forms of tourism, however, are characterized by private mobility, reliance on road infrastructure, and frequently occur within similar rural and scenic geographies such as mountain passes and countryside routes. This qualitative case study investigates how an entrepreneur via his rural hotel and associated car tourism events contributes to the development of car tourism. Data collection was done via semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, and the study explores mechanisms related to the entrepreneur, his hotel concept, car events, collaborations, stakeholder relations, experiences and marketing.

Finally, the study introduces a revised framework for car tourism, incorporating the concept of the Car Gaze as a passive mode of engagement in car events, while co-creation and practice represent active forms of participation.

This offers valuable insight for policymakers, marketers, destination managers and entrepreneurs seeking to develop drive and car tourism activities.

Keywords: Drive tourism, car tourism, entrepreneurship, destination development, car gaze.

 

Title: The "Unstoppable" Road
Author: Tarja Salmela, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

In this presentation, I approach the road as (1) an agential materiality that mediates and reshapes relations to place(s), and (2) a porous actant upon which narratives of tourism, militarisation, and industrial development are projected. Attending to the apparent duality of roads—particularly intensified in peripheral and rural contexts—I draw on their capacity to “elicit powerful temporal imaginaries, holding out the promise (or threat) of future connectivity, while also articulating the political and material histories that often render these otherwise mundane spaces so controversial” (Dalakoglou & Harvey, 2012, p. 460).

Empirically, I will focus on the Scottish Highlands, where I have conducted research over the past four years on the 516-mile circular tourism route, the North Coast 500 (NC500). The route connects existing A-roads and single-track roads in a loop from Inverness along the east coast to John o’ Groats, across the north to Durness and Lochinver, south to Ullapool, and back through the west coast to Inverness. As the NC500 has placed the Highlands on the global tourism map to an unprecedented degree, the road assemblage emerges simultaneously as an enabler, mediator, and a shared infrastructure mobilised for divergent interests—without the possibility of “the road” itself being stopped. I consider how the road’s (theoretically) “unstoppable” affordance shapes its character as more-than-infrastructure and as a lived and negotiated tourism space.

Literature:

Dalakoglou, D., & Harvey, P. (2012). Roads and Anthropology: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Time and (Im)Mobility. Mobilities, 7(4), 459–465. https://doi-org.mime.uit.no/10.1080/17450101.2012.718426

 

Title: How Information Shapes the Road: Self-Drive Tourism in Rural Contexts
Authors: Jörgen Eksell, Lund University, and Maria Månsson

This study examines how information logics shape self-drive tourists’ search, use, and interpretation of information during rural travel, focusing on the interplay between motivation and situational factors. While previous research has primarily addressed pre-trip planning and destination-level systems, limited attention has been given to how information influences mobility in practice during travel.

Using a qualitative mixed-methods approach, the study draws on 99 ethnographic chats and 879 survey responses collected from visitors to a rural World Heritage site in West Sweden. This design enables analysis of information practices across both pre-trip and in-transit phases.

The findings identify eight constellations of rural self-drivers, differentiated by motivations, information roles, practices, and situational triggers. These constellations are synthesised into an information-logic typology comprising purpose-driven, context-dependent, and situational drivers. The results demonstrate that information is not merely a supportive resource but a constitutive element of self-drive tourism, functioning as trigger, coordination tool, interpretive infrastructure, and memory.

By shifting focus from static segmentation to dynamic information practices, the study shows how tourism emerges through ongoing interactions between travellers and information in motion. The findings contribute to self-drive tourism research by conceptualising information as a structuring force and offer practical implications for rural destination communication symposiumstrategies aligned with different information logics.

 

Title: Old Rural Roads as Multiplex Experiencescapes
Author: Reidar J. Mykletun, Universitetet i Stavanger

This paper explores some aspects of old and unique Norwegian rural roads as experiencescapes and as gateways to cultural and natural heritage. Norway’s landscapes are mainly sparsely built-up areas with open fields, forest, rugged mountains, glaciers, valleys, lakes, rivers, 1,732 named fjords (the longest is 204 km), 239,057 islands, the world’s second longest coastline (100,925 km), and one third of the mainland and nine percent of the population located north of the Artic Circle. These landscapes seldom lent themselves easily to road construction. As most people used to live by the lakes, rivers, fjords, and the ocean, travel and transport by boats and ferries were important up to recent times. Consequently, rural cultural heritage is found near these roads that were built until the onset of the main period of industrialisation and centralisation of the society following WW2.

Researched here are two cases, protected as cultural heritage: Rv569 Romarheim - Dalseid (50 km) and two related detours of E134, Rullestadjuvet (Skromme – Rullestad, 6 km), and Madshus - Kyrping (18 km). Data were collected from document- and field-studies, and participatory observations in tour groups. Both cases allow for multiple experiences, depending on the mode of the travellers, be it transport-between-destinations mode, the mode of enjoying the movement as sports-driving, or the mode of sensing and admiring the natural and cultural heritage including the impressive monuments of skilled workmanship once invested in building these roads without todays’ technologies. The benefits of traversing these roads increase with relevant insights and careful planning.