20 years of Nordic tourism economics research: a review and future research agenda

Abstract

The number of economics-related articles in the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism (SJHT) has recently increased considerably. Despite this increase, the research efforts of Nordic economists on tourism issues have lagged behind in an international comparison. The recent increase in the number of economics-related publications in SJHT is due to better access to microdata (individual and firm data), the rapid development of statistical and econometric methods and the interest in the causes and effects of the tourism boom in the Nordic countries until recently. This article gives a brief review of the main topics of Nordic economic research that have been studied, as well as potential future research ideas (e.g. short term rentals, rising industry concentration, innovation and ICT) and data sources (big data, social media data, linked data at the micro level and register data) that can be developed and used for future studies. With the COVID-19 pandemic, general uncertainty and government intervention in the tourism sector will lead to a change in travel flows, calling for more quantitative studies. More research based on internationally comparable microdata for several Nordic countries will be particularly helpful.

Agglomeration and performance in Norwegian tourism

“…The tourism sector displays weak profitability compared to other industry sectors in Norway as shown in Figure 1 below (Tveteraas & Xie, 2022). Falk, Tveteraas, and Xie (2021) reaffirm this pattern comparing tourism with other industries with a more detailed breakdown of economic indicators on productivity, profitability, and industry structure. (Tveteraas and Xie 2022;Eurostat).…”

“…The reason why seasonality has increased is likely due to improved price competitiveness that has boosted more seasonal tourism demand in Norway (Xie and Tveteraas, 2020). The exhibits in Figure 5 and 6 both support the hypothesis that urbanization decreases tourism seasonality in growing cities and increases tourism seasonality in the periphery where population is decreasing.…”

“…Reduction in hotels' RevPAR is telling as it implies lower profit margins for a sector already associated with narrow margins (Porter, 2008;Zhang, Xie and Sikveland, 2020). Falk, Tveteraas and Xie (2020) show that operational margins for accommodation businesses in Norway is considerably lower than in other economic sectors. Thus, a further pressure on the narrow margins by seasonality is likely to increase the rate of exits from the sector Hagsten, 2018, Xie andZhang, 2020).…”

“…This also makes sense since tourist firms generally represent labor-intensive technologies. Moreover, profitability margins for tourist firms in Norway are low and as such firm survival should be sensitive to differences in labor costs (Falk et al, 2021).…”

Human capital and sustainability challenges for Airbnb Bed and Breakfast lifestyle entrepreneurs

“…In reality, the pandemic has already forced the industry to adjust, improvise, and diversifie in order to survive (Gjerald et al, 2021). This, in turn, offers novel fields of investigation for interdisciplinary study research (Falk et al, 2021). As highlighted by the international research network TRINET in 2020, one of the main challenges the industry is going to face in the future concerns sustainability, particularly "in promoting more sustainable actions and policy development" (Lundberg & Furunes, 2021, p. 9).…”