Drawing on primary data from a consumer survey (N = 2000), this study demonstrates a clear growth potential in rural tourism in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which is, however, hampered by innovation gaps. At the conceptual level, the study offers a model that identifies the following five innovation gaps in Scandinavian rural tourism: (1) the portfolio gap, (2) the policy departmentalization gap, (3) the knowledge gap, (4) the change motivation gap and (5) the resource interpretation gap. At the empirical level, the study shows that rural tourism has its basis in a dichotomy between authenticity and modernization. New and prospective customer groups, particularly from Germany, demand more diversified and higher quality rural tourism products than current groups, for example, in relation to outdoor opportunities, leisure festivals and cultural activities. With rural assets, it is possible to expand the portfolio without compromising the rural image. Rural tourism enterprises and destinations remain slow movers in terms of innovation endeavours, and the study indicates that the discrepancies between 2 potential customers' service expectations and their spending patterns can partially explain this phenomenon. The merit of the innovation gap model is that this model identifies potential rebalancing actions at both enterprise and destination levels.
Rural festivals emerge in numbers, scale and variety. They contribute to the attractiveness and viability of rural places for residents as well as visitors. Typically, festivals are deeply embedded in local ecosystems of sports, cultural, business and other types of associations, while they deliver elements of coherence, commitment and meaning, and sometimes economic benefits as well. This study aims to showcase the business entrepreneurship aspect of festivals in Danish rural areas, and it is based on primary data from 315 festivals. The special emphasis is put on the nature, prevalence and importance of business activities at such festivals, and on the opportunities for entrepreneurs to utilize festivals as a means of business development in relation to sales, marketing, product testing, and customers' feedback. The results show that, on the one hand, only very few of the surveyed festivals are entirely commercial, and the commercial objectives are, due to ideological and relational reasons, generally low-ranked by organizers. On the other hand there is strong evidence that local businesses actually participate in rural festivals' ecosystem, and that there are numerous mutual interactions between local business, festivals and residents that altogether create an excellent means for entrepreneurial drive. It is delicate undertaking to strengthen partnerships with entrepreneurs without compromising the community ingredients. Several potential courses of action are proposed.
Against a rapid and frequently unsustainable development of tourism in Poland, this article aims to recognize the investment attractiveness for tourism in Poland and its spatial diversity in the context of relieving the effects of overtourism. In the first stage, a multi-dimensional indicator model was developed, and then it was used to assess the attractiveness level of cities and rural, urban and urban-rural municipalities in Poland. The results of the study were the basis of the analysis of the attractiveness of cities in relation to their size, location in the tourist region and various forms of tourism. From a theoretical standpoint, the study shows that there is a clear-cut need to redirect tourism investments from the centres to more distinct locations in order to achieve more sustainable development of tourism. Furthermore, it was found, that the main factors that determine the tourism attractiveness of cities are market potential, cultural values, social infrastructure, and in some cases, natural values. The tourist potential of cities and rural areas allows for spatial dispersion of investments and counteracting the concentration of phenomena related to overtourism. The analysis was carried out for 2478 municipalities in Poland. The sums of zero unitarization method was used to assess the level of investment attractiveness.
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