The impact of Airbnb hosts on Arctic local economies

The aim of this Nordregio ACP project's was to investigate how Airbnb hosts contribute to sustainable tourism development in rural and remote regions. The number of Airbnb hosts has been increasing in peripheries in the recent decade, attracting tourists as an alternative source of income and providing opportunities for local entrepreneurship. Airbnb-based tourism can have positive and negative impacts on the local economies. The main goal of the project was to study Airbnb hosts and their contribution to the sustainable destination development and community formation in local economies in Northern Jutland (Denmark), North Iceland (Iceland) and Nordland (Norway), which represent typical Nordic rural and peripheral areas.

The project ran from 2021-2023 and ended with a report with all the main findings that can be located HERE.

Other publications with the project's findings:

1. Professionalisation and performance of Airbnb hosts in rural regions in International Journal of Hospitality Management (January 2024), a blog post about the main findings of the paper can be found on Forskning.no (in Norwegian).
2. Airbnb í dreifbýli. Samantekt á niðurstöðum norrænnar rannsóknar a short summary in Icelandic with the main findings with a special focus on Iceland (2024)
3. Airbnb Hosts and Their Contribution to Sustainability Through Entrepreneurship and Consumption: Research Gaps and an Exploratory Study in Nordic Tourist Destinations a book chapter in Tourism Entrepreneurship: Knowledge and Challenges for a Sustainable Future (2024) published by Springer Palgrave. The topic of the book revolves around entrepreneurship and its relationship with the sustainable development of tourism, its meaning and manifestations.

Guðrún Þóra Gunnarsdóttir, director of ITRC, was the project manager for the Icelandic part of the project. Working alongside her on the Icelandic team was Vera Vilhjálmsdóttir, researcher at ITRC.