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Tourism is the world’s largest and fastest growing industry. In recent years there have been increases in international tourism for the purpose of experiencing another culture. There is a wide-spread opinion that the economic impact of tourism is always positive while the social and environmental impact is always negative. Indeed, increasing incomes to regions due to tourists are easy to see as well as numerous host-tourist conflicts and destruction of the environment and local cultures. However, tourism can have both positive and negative outcomes for residents in communities when sharing and preserving their culture and nature could be seen as conflicting goals. (Besculides, Lee, McCormick, 2002:303) In this paper I will consider impacts of tourism with reference to the Lofoten Islands. This is a popular tourist destination in Northern Norway. The area is unique because of its nature and variety of sea activities, e.g. fishing, boat trips, sailing etc. It is also known in Norway as a traditional fishing community, where the fishing industry dominates the economy and the social life of the local people. Today those resources which used to be source of living for the local community have become very attractive for tourists. It is a challenge to get most profits of the situation and avoid possible conflicts.

According to recent statistics, tourism provides 10 percent of the world’s income and employs almost one tenth of the world’s workforce (www.investigate.html). By the year 2010 these numbers will double. All considered, tourism’s actual and potential economic impact is astounding. Many people emphasise positive aspects of tourism as a source of foreign exchange, a way to balance foreign trade, an “industry without chimney” – in short, manna from heaven.(L.van den Berghe, source unknown) But there are also negative sides of tourism’s economic boom for local communities:

Economic impacts to the local community depend on how much of the incomes generated by tourists go to the host communities. In most all-inclusive package tours more than 80 percent of travellers’ fees go to the airlines, hotels and other international companies, not to local businessmen and workers (www.ecotourism.org).

Large hotel chain restaurants often import food to satisfy foreign visitors and rarely employ local staff for senior management positions, preventing local farmers and workers from reaping the benefit of their presence.

Resorts and hotels often over-consume natural resources like water and power, forcing utility prices up and causing blackouts and water shortages for locals.

Many tourists never leave the hotel grounds or cruise ship, reducing the possibility of tourist income for local businesses. “Rug sack tourists” have little effect on host communities as they consume very little during the trip.

Faced with limited economic prospects, locals lose the incentive to preserve and conserve their natural and cultural resources.

Sometimes the costs connected with tourism overcome the incomes that tourists generate. For example, in all-inclusive packages, as I have said, most of the expenditures go to the airlines, hotel chains and touroperators, while the local communities have to work with pollution and destruction in their region caused by tourists. As a result, it costs a lot for the local communities to preserve the nature and the cultural monuments in the region while a good deal of incomes flow out of the host-region.

With reference to the Lofoten Islands the question is how the fishing society can get the most of the tourism industry, and whether the local people can get positive economic effects out of the developing tourism in their region.

Here is a figure showing relationship between tourism and local community based on economic impacts.

Fig.1 “ A general model of the local communities’ opinion about tourism” Rønningen 1996

Kilde: Kulturturisme. Lofoten som reiselivsattraksjon. Hovedfag.PDF, www.nhh.no/geo/prosjekt/kbl/r200rapport.pdf The figure shows 4 types of economic impacts of tourism, based on the coming incomes and the use of resources. No community would want tourism that uses a lot of resources in the area but leaves little money to the local population. Such tourism can be called undesirable. Communities can put up with tourism that gives tem a lot of incomes but also uses a lot of resources. It is the so-called acceptable tourism. In case when the use of resources is little and the incomes to the region are also little, the effect of tourism is almost not seen. This is the so-called “invisible” tourism. So the economic impact will be considered as positive even if the resources are used to great extent, in case if tourism gives large incomes to the local people as a result. Hovland (source unknown) divided economic impacts of tourism into direct and indirect. Direct effects are most visible and easy to measure. These are contacts between a visitor and local actors, such as the tourist industry, other industries, municipality and other local actors. Indirect effects of tourism appear when local businesses, population, municipalities and other actors are influenced by tourism through other actors. I shall now discuss these relations between tourism and fishery industry on the Lofoten Islands. As I have emphasised Lofoten is an international

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