The maturing of polar tourism as a 'field of study'

• Main Authors: Stewart, Emma, Liggett, D., Dawson, J.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Icelandic Tourism Research Centre
• Subjects: Polar Tourism; International Polar Year
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10182/11127

In alignment with the growth of polar travel over the last few decades, there has been an intensification of research activities related to various aspects of the polar tourism phenomenon. Through an extensive literature review of polar tourism journal articles (n=263), we analyse research efforts since the 1980s identifying (a) key research phases (from early descriptive works characterised by chronologies, basic statistical data and narratives about tourism operations to more recent empirically informed work with more nuanced methods of inquiry); (b) critical research outputs; (c) key research themes and their evolution over time (from an initial focus on understanding and documenting tourism patterns, tourism impacts, tourism policy/management strategies and tourism development issues to new research areas in polar tourism, including research into the implications of global change for polar tourism and the need to build robust governance structures); (d) the numbers and types of journals chosen to publish polar tourism research; (e) regional trends; and (f) the nature of research networks and collaborations. We discuss the factors that have either supported the emergence of this field of study (the International Polar Research Tourism Network, the International Polar Year, etc.) or hindered effective development (remoteness, access to tourists, etc.). We conclude that polar tourism scholarship has now matured to the point where research is characterised by being empirically based, theoretically situated, and increasingly connected to a wider disciplinary base than in the past. Finally, we identify future research areas, such as the need to understand new players and new markets, the influence of new technology and the politicisation of polar tourism.