Understanding
Tourists´ Attitudes towards Virtual Substitutes in Comparison to Real
Visits to Actual Nature Destinations:
Cases In Arctic Region.
Abstract:
The Tourism impact on the Nature and globalization are perceived to be
increasing in frequency and intensity.
Conflict between sustainability and development of a destination is
becoming in a focus globally and also in Finland and Russia. Russian and Finnish stakeholders, for
example, tourism managers, ecologists and local authorities wish to understand
more of the possible means to explore the experience. This study is concerned
with a question: how efficient and
satisfactory substitute a virtual experience may be as an alternative to a real
visit to a nature destination? In
addition, stakeholders and decision makers wish to employ means of promotion
sustainable tourism business, finding the key success factor, ideas and clues,
and managing it
Description:
The project is to about how to find out the methods to promote sustainable
development within nature tourism as a business for indigenous population to
increase possibilities for economic activity that takes into consideration the
values expressed in sustainability to reduce damages of nature and culture.
Also the Project hopefully contributes toward further international integration
in Barents region.
Further
ideas are being generated for the final thesis. For instance, managers perceive
the conflict from the profit point of view, trying to increase number of visits
rather then make the visits more qualitatively interesting. They should be
helped to make sustainable tourism business plans and get free consultations.
Authorities could regulate legislation and to make benefits for those
developing sustainable attitudes. In Kola region ecological education should be
included in the curriculum of educational institutions on all levels. If we
take a look at Kola as a micro-system we could notice that sustainable tourism
could mean only inbound tourism, cause outbound depends on population growth
and its welfare rather then inbound deals with the promotion of the region. So,
the marketing strategy should form backbone of sustainability of the region.
This hypothesis needs verification for research, but the idea states that the
local tourism administration could promote the sustainable attitude to the
region, so that ecologically sound type of tourism is generated in the first
place. In Kola, historically Murmansk was the center of infrastructure. If the
sustainability means not to build new roads, it is possible to use only
existing city infrastructure, but offer all possible tourist’s experiences that
local nature could give. A considerable way out may include development of
modern museums using IT-technologies: 3D-object modeling to show landscapes,
video-installations to make tourists penetrate into the fauna and flora world
of the region without actual visits to the easily destroyed real places which
Arctic nature is. Well-done panoramas and exhibitions of indigenous species
could be of exploit. It is therefore
suggested and argued that it could be interesting to research if tourists could
accept virtual substitutions to the real experiences. Of cause tourism always
means transportation and need for place change, but traveling to Murmansk or
Rovaniemi gives this sense, and museum only add the details. We postulate that
the virtual experience will be partially denied by tourists.
The
focus of this research is to find out possible answers to this hypothesis. The
study will
focus
on the issue of conflict of denying IT-substitutes. The perspective chosen is
that of tourist’s opinion of her/his experience. A Case study methodology will
be employed to identify contextual phenomena of the conflict. Using qualitative approaches, the interaction
that precipitates conflict will be described, as well as the perceptions of the
groups involved in conflict. Cross-case
analyses will be conducted. Results will
be communicated as a dissertation (in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for Doctor of Social Studies), as well as via journal articles and articles for
popular publication.
Study
questions for the research to answer are the following three questions:
What are tourists’ attitudes towards proposed
virtual IT-substitutes in comparison to the visiting a real destination?
Specifically,
how do tourist perceive conflicts in having to choose a virtual experience
instead of a real destination experience?
The
sub-questions to this main question are the following: What IT-technologies of
virtualization of tourism destinations in general and Arctic destinations in
specific could be adopted to enhance the aims of sustainable development? How
IT-technologies of virtualization of tourism destinations would enhance the
aims of sustainable development?
Key words: Sustainable development, International co-operation, green management, Nature and Atmosphere, Lapland, Kola, IT-tecèLkÐ
