Project Aim
The aim of this project was to develop knowledge about the interaction between certification processes, learning and innovation in Norwegian tourism destinations.
Objectives and research questions
The brand or certification Sustainable Tourism Destination has provided participating destinations in Norway with a tool for systematic work with and for sustainable development (Vista Analysis, 2016). The certification scheme has offered destination companies (DMOs), tourism operators and municipalities a framework for constructive cooperation and operationalization of the sustainability concept. In this project we studied collaboration and learning for sustainability in participating destinations and how collaboration can contribute to innovation and increased sustainability. In the evaluation of Sustainable Destinations (Vista Analysis, 2016), it was concluded that the work on sustainability is firmly rooted in the municipality but less well in tourism companies and communities. The report also writes that there are companies that have a more vague relationship to sustainable development and branding than the municipality. Hence, there is a decoupling between ambitions of the municipality and the local involvement. Based on this, we have developed four research questions (RQ) that have been addressed this project.
RQ 1: What are the important motives behind companies' and destinations' decisions to get certified with an emphasis on sustainability, and in particular what significance do business / managers' value preferences have?
In the evaluation of the branding scheme, most travel destinations have stated the desire to become more sustainable as the main reason for participating in the scheme (Vista Analysis, 2016). It is therefore important to find out how local actors understand sustainability, what they put into the concept and what they prioritize in relation to the development of their own organization and the destination.
RQ 2: What are the main differences between the different certification situations in regard of learning and innovation? We have examined two destinations that are both certified as sustainable destinations and world heritage site and two that are certified as sustainable destinations only. We have been particularly interested in how the experience of world heritage status has influenced the certification process to become a sustainable destination.
RQ 3: How does being part of a destination that works systematically with sustainable development impact innovation, collaboration and value-creation of experience-based tourism companies?
RQ 4: How can we practically operationalize sustainable development, and the value creation dimension in sustainable development, through important critical issues tourism players should work on? With this question we try to find out how engagement with the experience-based tourism players can be promoted.
We have focused our research on four Norwegian tourism destinations that are labelled sustainable: Trysil, Røros, Vega and Den Gyldne Omvei (Inderøy). Data was collected the summer of 2017 and autumn of 2019. The gap in the data collection was caused by the maternity leave of the project leader. We divided the empirical research among three researchers: professor Dr. Dorthe Eide (Nord University), Associate professor Dr. Hin Hoarau-Heemstra (Nord University) and Unni Myklevold, Msc (Lofoten reiselivfagskole). The researchers were spending several days at the destinations to observe, interview and talk to destination stakeholders and followed up with Skype interviews if the informants were unavailable during the fieldwork-week. In addition to face-to-face interviews on location, we conducted interviews via Skype with the national certification organization Innovation Norway, as well as Hanen. The latter offers an eco-certifications at the business level. All 34 interviews were transcribed verbatim (by Troll i Ord). Initially all interviews were read, and sections dealing with learning, knowledge sharing, sustainability and innovation were noted. In a second round of analysis, we compared the cases with each other and looked for commonalities and differences. We have complemented our empirical data gathering with the study of reports and documents like handlingsplaner (Røros, Trysil and Vega), Evaluaring av bærekraftig reisemål (Vista Analyse, 2016), nettsider til destinasjonsselskaper, nettside Innovasjon Norge, nettside deltagende bedrifter). As per today, we have not finished our data analysis yet due to the additional data that was added in the autumn of 2019. Our findings that we present in this report should therefore be regarded as preliminary.
Our analysis is built around the main themes of our research: the understanding of sustainability (what, vision); learning opportunities in the certification process (who, how and coordination); learning and knowledge integration linked to the certification process; innovation (what, where and who) and potential for improvement.
Based on our analysis we see that destinations are challenged in developing a shared vision regarding sustainability and our study points to different ways tourism organizations understand sustainability. We present how different actors understand the outcomes of the certification process. We further discuss how and if knowledge from the certification process is used for innovation.
Project team (HHN)
Hin Hoarau-Heemstra (project leader)
Dorthe Eide
Øystein Nystad
Project Partner
Unni Myklevoll (Lofoten Reiselivsfagskole)
Source of financing
Stimuleringsmidler forskning og utvikling VRI Nordland
Timeline
December 2016 – February 2020
Findings
Sustainability: motives and values
Informants' main idea about sustainability is that it is the responsibility of all stakeholders involved and that knowledge is crucial to make sustainable decisions. Several stakeholders mentioned the demand from customers as an important driver to work with sustainability. However, for the interviewed business actors sustainability was a rather vague concept that got mainly linked to waste management. When digging further into the concept, we found three main concerns.
1) concern for sustainability aspects tends to be linked to sector, i.e. those working with nature focused on green and environmental aspects, culture-based firms are concerned with heritage and cultural sustainability, culinary experience-based firms focused on social sustainability. Environmental sustainability is important for the business informants. Especially in Vega, where cultural heritage and ecological sustainability are related to fisheries and eider ducks. However, in the other destinations, few mention the relationship between tourism and wildlife. Biodiversity is one of the topics of the destination certification but not many dare to burn their fingers on the topic, especially regarding living with predators like wolves.
2) keep local communities vital and lively. This ambition is threatened by an aging and migrating population. Therefore, the focus needs to be on whole-year tourism activities that will create a chain reaction where guests in other seasons will make it possible for other businesses, like sport-shops and restaurants, to stay open all year round. This is expected to help the local community to become sustainable and attractive.
3) focus on sustainability can lead to rigid preservation (making the place into a museum'), especially when combined with the world heritage status. Tourism business actors argue that such preservation can hamper work and a living society; instead, preservation should come from usage and innovation.
Municipalities and DMO's are motivated to get certified because of marketing advantages, effectivization of internal processes and increase of quality of the tourism product. Innovation Norway has the ambition that firms in sustainable destinations should get an environmental management certification at the business level. This will provide firms with knowledge and integration across levels. The businesses who have a certification, get promoted on websites of innovation Norway and the municipality. So far, only few tourism businesses have the miljøfyrtårn certification and even fewer of the businesses with a certification work with tourism experiences. The hotel in Vega had started with its certification process (Miljøfyrtårn) but has given up because they experienced the label as requiring too much work, bureaucratic and with a too narrow environmental focus. The same reasons were given by other stakeholders in the studied destinations. Inderøy and Den Gylne Omvei managed to get more of their members certified, or involved in the certification process, by offering support from the municipality. It seems that working with a label on the business level helps to internalize the sustainable destination certification. The destination label gets more meaning when businesses start working with their own certification because they are able to operationalize the different aspects of sustainability. Although few actually manage to get certified, it seems that the tourism experience businesses in our cases do work with and according to sustainability principles but not professionally or systematically. The reasons that are given are lack of time and a misfit with the activities of the business.
Different certification situations
We saw in all four destinations, in the first round of certification, that learning took place when local actors had to translate and concretize what sustainability could mean on the destination level, and how to implement the criteria from innovation Norway that are based in the UN-sustainability criteria. Synergy between existing plans and ambitions is important when implementing a sustainable destination project.
For example, learning from the certification process was enhanced by the experiences with the world heritage status. Getting certified means a lot of documentation and governance locally. Especially Vega got these routines quickly in place because the World Heritage status demanded much of the same documentation processes.
Thinking along the line of making the tourism industry more efficient and clean fitted a destination like Trysil because they used to be a forestry society where they had spent a lot of thoughts about how garbage from the forestry industry could be re-used. When innovation Norway asked the municipality and DMO if they were interested in the project, they initially thought they could combine several environmental improvements under one umbrella.
After the initial pilot period of three years, all the destinations we studied decided to get recertified. What is important for a recertification process is that there are no major changes compared to the first round of certification. It seems the destination can handle incremental changes but see the initial certification as an investment for later rounds. It is expected that the workload will get less with the maintenance of the certification system.
Innovation, collaboration and value-creation
Positive consequences of being certified are an increased awareness of sustainability indicators amongst tourism actors in the destination. And that sustainability is now communicated and acted upon. Besides waste and water management, energy efficiency is an important sustainability driver for innovation. Another innovative development that followed the sustainability destination was the investment in and marketing of other seasons. Many actors are now involved several networks and there is little doubt that there has been an increase in activities at the destination level, creating positive synergies. The destinations work more systematic, professional and thorough, and some of these changes reach the firms. But there is potential for more involvement, and bottom up processes. Especially tourism experience firms have a hard time to directly link the sustainable destination certification process to their own innovation processes. Since the destinations got certified, the number of businesses with an environmental label have increased. However, at the same time the actors involved in destination certification have realized that the environmental certification can be too demanding for micro-sized businesses. That means that only larger companies got certified, like hotels and other service-based businesses.
Sustainable future of Norwegian tourism
In order to operate in a more sustainable manner, certifications at both the destination and business level should complement each other. Hospitality businesses often have a business level certification that assists them on their path to sustainability. It fits their activities, challenges and possibilities. While the micro-sized experience based companies fall out because they are too small; it is too costly for them to start the certification process or the certification does not fit with their activities that are often a combination of different things. We identified different expectations and ways of learning during the certification process and recertification process. Enabling and facilitating knowledge and learning is not an easy task for governmental organizations that find themselves in the middle of different networks, values and knowledge cultures. We saw that knowledge often sticks to governmental organizations and learning takes mostly place between organizations responsible for the certification. One reason can be the different ways in which sustainability is understood in tourism destinations. That makes it difficult to develop a shared vision of the concept to facilitate absorptive capacity of new knowledge. This is a challenge that the destinations are facing because sustainability means something else for different organizations, depending on their sector, their role in the destination and their size. A common vision can be developed through certification at the business level .It is necessary that all voices are gathered around the table and that their complex and often conflicting requirements are considered. The management of the sustainability certification process dominated much of the discussion, and tourism businesses were only brought in to disseminate information to in later stages of the process. In order to transform into a sustainable destination where values mean more than what is written on the wall (value-statements in certification programs) stakeholders need to develop a trusting, learning and sharing culture through the collective intelligence and knowledge of the people and organizations who make up the destination.