Browsing by Subject "opastaminen"

Different parties such as industry, tourism and research are more and more interested in arctic regions. Tourism is one of the biggest source of livelihood there and growing all the time. Arctic nature is vulnerable and there are indigenous peoples living there. Their way of life is based on natural sources of livelihood such as reindeer breeding. Tourist industry like all the other actions in the region should be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. So it is important to do research on problems to reconcile different forms of industries and source of livelihoods. The purpose of this thesis is to study possibilities of tourist guidance to solve problems to reconcile reindeer husbandry and tourist industry in municipality of Enontekiö in Finland. It has been noticed in the research of ecotourism that it is possible to influence tourists’ behavior and attitudes by guidance if it is carried out in the right way. This is the reason why my interest is directed to the role of guidance to solve the problems. My research questions are: 1) What kind of problems there are between tourist industry and reindeer husbandry? 2) How is it possible to decrease the harm that tourist industry causes to reindeer husbandry by tourist guidance? 3) How the tourist guidance should be improved? I have done reviews on earlier studies and reports about problems between tourist industry and reindeer husbandry and also about the role of guidance in nature tourism management. Based on these reviews I have proposed a hypothesis how it could be possible to decrease the harm that tourist industry causes to reindeer husbandry by tourist guidance. To test my hypothesis I collected interviews of 15 tourism entrepreneurs and 5 representatives of Metsähallitus. I used the methods of qualitative content analysis to analyze the data. It came out that the biggest problems between tourist industry and reindeer husbandry are disturbance of the peace of pasture, decreasing pasture area, equity in land-use decision-making, and the willingness among the tourism entrepreneurs and reindeer herders to reconcile the source of livelihoods. Tourists do not know much about reindeer husbandry. It is possible to decrease some the harm that tourist industry causes by guidance when it is carried out as recommended in the studies. The role of guidance in decreasing the harms is not very remarkable, because the biggest harms caused by tourist industry are not outcomes of tourists’ thoughtlessness or behavior against rules that could be decreased by guidance. The best education and guidance is given in reindeer farm visits and in guided tours organized by program service companies. The participants of those programs are mainly foreigners even though the majority of tourists in Enontekiö are Finns. Their main source of information is the website of Metsähallitus. The most efficient way to increase tourists’ knowledge would probably be influencing the content of websites of Metsähallitus and marketing of reindeer farm visits and guided tours to Finns.