I’ve had a day focussed on tourism today, one way or another. It’s actually ‘low season’ at the moment, between the busy snow-scooter, skiing – filled March and April and the summer season proper, although there are still visitors about here and there. So, like the tourist operators and service providers, I have been gearing up for the next round coming in…There are actually quite good statistics on what kind of people come from where for Svalbard, but not so much qualitative information on why they come and what they take away from their visit. So I am going to attempt to get a bit of an insight into value in Svalbard from this perspective as well, and am part-way to setting up a survey system. In fact, the most observant of you will perhaps notice there is a link to it at the top of this very website as well as the posters and forms I’m slowly getting around the town with. I say attempt as I really don’t know what kind of response, if any, I will get from this approach, but sometimes research is about it being worth a try, right?
This evening I was very much looking forward to going to a cultural show from the people of Barentsburg visiting Longyearbyen, but due to one of my classic dispraxia-type blunders, I managed to miss it entirely (why do evening activities start so early here?!). Very trying, but ultimate failure. So instead, I ended up reading some more about tourism, which was actually quite well-timed, as some of the chapters were calling very strongly for more research into Arctic tourism…
Pretty good book, another good find from the polar collection at Longyearbyen library 🙂
samsaville.org 