How the Advertisement of Adventure Tourism Activites Affects Tou

1770 Japanese diary with contents describing auroras above the Japanese’s capital Kyoto. These suggests that the storm may have been 7% larger than the Carrington event (Frost, Natasha 4 October 2017). The Carrington event was a huge geometric storm on September 1-2 1859. A solar coronal mass ejection hit earths magnetosphere. This proved in the largest geomagnetic storm on record (Philips, Tony January 21, 2009). From a paper written to the Royal society on November 21 1861, Balfour Stewart documents results that where taken using a self-recording magnetograph at the kew observatory in London. He recognised a connection between the 2nd September aurora storm and the Carrington event. This was a result of the intense Carrington white solar flare. This produced auroras so widespread and incredibly bright that there was published scientific articles, newspapers and ship logs throughout Europe, japan, United sates and Australia. It was reported in the New York times on the 2nd September 1861 that the aurora was “so brilliant that at about one oclock ordinary print could be read by the light” (Green, J; Boardsen, S; Odenwald, S; Humble, J; Pazamickas, K 2006).

  Green, J; Boardsen, S; Odenwald, S; Humble, J; Pazamickas, K (2006). "Eyewitness reports of the great auroral storm of 1859". Advances in Space Research. 38 (2): 145–54

 Philips, Tony (January 21, 2009). "Severe Space Weather—Social and Economic Impacts". NASA Science: Science News. science.nasa.gov. Retrieved February 16, 2011.

The Northern Lights route is a 620km road, situated on the border of Finland, Sweden and will take you from Tornio to Tromso (TomTom 2020). This route is one of the cultural routes of the council of Europe. Named after the northern lights as it is a route that travels through countries in the Northern Hemisphere, where the aurora borealis is often seen on the journey. “The Northern Lights Route hopes to introduce its viewers to the fascinating and compelling qualities of the northern regions.”, “We wish to show how daring journeys to the far corners of the ancient world once came to pass, and to offer you descriptions of life as it once was lived, and still is lived” (Northern Lights Route). From these quotes the creation of this route was for cultural heritage and exchanging values, however it can be argued that the rhetoric is more persuasive in tourism promotion. In this Consumer society, it is not surprising that there is an importance on trade and wealth creation in promotion of the northern lights route.

One of the titles of the menu on the introductory page of the Northern Lights Route is “Trade”. When clicking this link, you are prompted with a sentence “trade leads to contact between people”  

This statement demonstrates rhetoric aiming at persuading the reader that trade and contact between people are in a metonymic relationship which implies that one merges with the other

If the “brave” explorers of the past are to be succeeded by today’s tourists, the representation must rely on a rhetoric of persuasion which promises experiences out of the ordinary

Northern Lights Route, http://www.uib.ub.uit.no/northernlights.

TomTom (2020) NORTHERN LIGHTS ROUTE, Available at: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/routes/details/finland/northern-lights-route/ (Accessed: 20th october 2020).

Content Analysis

These 4 images are from 3 separate ad campaigns all including Northern Lights.

Figure 1 is a large poster promoting tourism in Finland. Seen in a Finish Airport. Props used in this advert is a Santa hat, which shows that the advertiser wants to link northern lights with Christmas, and potentially use mythology to link Finland and northern lights to a magical festive experience.  Using these props such as the Santa hat, animated green character and illustrated scene that looks quite like Disney, this methodology may attract families with younger children who want to experience this magical experience.

Figure 2 is an image from ASDA’s 2019 Christmas campaign, with the punch line in the tv advert being “lets make Christmas extra special”. Again, linking the northern lights to Christmas. Although it can be said that the northern lights are relevant to winter as that’s when they are most likely to be visible (September too march), this is a clear selling point for younger children and families who want to experience the mythology. In this image there is a young boy and girl where again the advertiser has used children to show the product in a desirable context. Using both genders to keep the target market broader.

Figure 3 and 4 are for Northern Light tours in Trosmo, Norway. In both ads we see beautiful shots of the Northern Lights in a nice setting. Both with bold statements as the main theme of the image. Figure 4 uses a human actor to again make it a desirable context so that some transference is made between product attributes and the wants and needs of the consumer: if a customer buys the product they are likely to attain the glamour and prestige of the situation depicted in the image.

Tourists are not motiva­­ted to travel by specific destination attributes, but rather by fulfilling psychological needs such as self-actualisation, social interaction, sexual arousal and excitement (Crompton, 1979).

 In marketing, regimes of fantasy and desire they contribute to the maintenance of a national mythology which defines Australia as

Anglo-Celtic, masculine, and rural. These advertisements are an integral part of generating abroad the imagined geographies of Australia and inventing the imagined community that holds Australian society together.

 Potential tourists are no longer restricted to a wealthy elite, given the emergence of the new-leisure class, special interest groups and cheaper airfares in reducing the distance and costs impediments to Australia’s overseas tourism. Actual tourist numbers increased in the period 1930–1993 from around 30 thousand to over 2.8 million and have doubled over the last decade.

 Artists, Charles Condor, Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton contributed substantially to the ‘outback’ as Australia’s symbolic landscape through their paintings of land and life in rural locations. These artists’ paintings demonstrate how symbolic landscapes are essential in the formation of ‘imagined communities’, born of shared ideas, memories and feelings which bind people together (Anderson, 1993; Osborne, 1988)

At least 95 per cent of the running time of each advertisement is selling experiences and activities in outback locations. In contrast cityscapes are represented as the familiar; locations of sophisticated civilisations from which the fantasy of escape can begin

 Mythologised within Terra nullis, the stereotyped visual images of the desert represent an unknown frontier; an environment against which individuals can test their wits and muscle; where there is scope for personal self-advancement, self-discovery, heroic achieve-ment (of survival, exploration and collection)

and experience of supernatural forces

 A survey of Australia’s international tourists revealed that some 49 per cent are interested in experiencing Aboriginal culture (Australia

There is a growing recognition in the tourism literature that National Tourism Organisations (NTOs) are pursuing marketing strategies which seek to develop a competitive advantage by creating products and experiences through the imagery and place-marketing they undertake (Pike, 2004)

utilisation of adventure tourism as a new niche product and experience which can create particular place associations and images of areas to promote a tourism sector

There is a clear understanding amongst researchers and the global tourism industry that adventure tourism has a major role to play in destinations (Swarbrooke et al., 2003)

adventure tourism is viewed as travel to a destination to take part in adventurous activities, rather than adventure travel (Weber, 2001)

Adventure tourism is viewed at a global level as one of the growing sectors of the visitor attraction industry (Swarbrooke et al., 2003)

For some destinations, adventure tourism products form a major part of the tourism product—e.g. Queenstown, New Zealand (Ryan & Trauer, 2005)

The greater extension of various types of adventure activities to a mass market reflects this growth, where participants do not have to be experts or highly skilled participants to sample an adventure experience.

one of the core features associated with adventure tourism is ‘the deliberate seeking of risk and the uncertainty of outcomes’ (Ewert, 1989, p. 8)

Essentially, much adventure tourism is a manufactured experience of adventure (Cloke & Perkins, 1998) and offers varying levels of risk. However, much of the influential research on adventure tourism highlights risk as the key element.

 how a failure in any of the areas of risk can contribute to an accident or injury and the perceived levels of risk, based on research by Bentley et al. (2001)

high risk adventure travel- find some readings

Classifications of adventure tourism alone do not assist in understanding image portrayal of activities or the destination in which activities are offered. Some commentators, such as Macfarlane (2003), develop these more pragmatic conceptualisations, arguing that our understanding of adventure tourism is really a social construction, in that individuals learn to read the images that are presented in a variety of formats. Historically environments such as the Scottish Highlands are epitomised by these social constructions, as now discussed

 Many of the stereotyped images associated with traditional enjoyment of the outdoors have been re-created through the imagery and promotion of VisitScotland, with its Active Scotland and Wild Scotland campaigns (Grenier, 2005), and applied to an expansive range of activities that take place in the natural environment

the critical role of tourism marketers in creating promotional images of adventure tourism and the meaning this has for visitor experiences, place-marketing, the commodification of tourism, and the creation of new sites and destinations previously not associated with international and domestic tourism. Cloke and Perkins (2002)

this paper examines how adventure tourism has been promoted in Scotland and the way it has been represented in photographic images.

how the public sector has created a variety of imagery and notions of adventure tourism as a sporting activity, to firmly position adventurous activities in an interconnected setting within the sport tourism domain

s. It is against this background that the early 2000s has seen a growth in VisitScotland and the Area Tourist Board (ATB) network’s2 interest in and use of adventure tourism to promote the essence of Scotland. This has involved the use of imagery and visual material to convey the Active Scotland brand essence

 With the competition between destinations in seeking to find niche products to attract different types of visitor, the creation and exploitation of destination images has become a major activity for advertising agencies and tourism companies (Morgan & Pritchard, 2003

Yet Albers and James (1988, p. 134) argue that in the communication of destination image ‘Photographs are vital to successfully creating and communicating images of a destination. They have been used to gain understanding of the tourist experience (through photographs taken) and the process by which tourist destinations are represented’.

When choosing an image to use for promotional purposes. the highly selective processes engaged in to mediate landscapes to convey atmosphere and sense of places, while captivating the consumer’s interest and imagination

Human (1999) suggests the choice of photographic images used by the tourism industry is determined by two factors: subject and visual quality.

The photographer has, to a certain degree, the power to influence what the outcome will be and consequently non-desirable elements of the environment can be avoided or edited in order to show the destination in a favourable light. Urry (1990)

This is particularly important for adventure tourism promotion as, in the words of Urry (1990, p. 139) ‘a photograph ... seems to furnish evidence that something did indeed happen—that someone really was there or that the mountain actually was that large’

s discussed by Rose (2001, p. 74), who argues that ‘the camera is an instrument that records what was in front of its lens when the shutter snapped’. Rose (2001) suggests that while photographic images can be manipulated in many ways, resulting images retain a visual element of what was there when the picture was taken.

photographs are the outcome of an active signifying practice, which suggests a strong link between photographic images and semiotics

the ideology of advertisements, argues that because things ‘mean’ something to us, we furnish this meaning to the product, as encouraged to do so by the form of the advertisement.

Ads call upon the readers for them to supply the knowledge nessesary to understand the imagery, therefore how the viewer views the ad is based off there cultural knowledge.

Induced or projected images usually stem from the conscious effort of marketers to develop, promote, and advertise a destination

regard the pictures to be equally, if not more, important than textual or spoken material.

Advertisements are experienced as part of a flow of many sorts of cultural communication and their significance cannot always be reduced to their manifest, objective content. To gain a deeper understanding of the images content once quantified, the combined benefits of content and semiological analysis may be used.

When attempting to gain an understanding of the meaning of an advertisement, the focal point should not be only the elements of which it is made up, but also the overall impression that it creates and the techniques used to create it.

Dyer (1982, pp. 93–94) describes the process of iconographic analysis and states that the first step in looking at the visual, illustrative material is to list the items present in the picture (such as ‘products, props, settings and actors’); second, attempt to identify links and relationships to other elements and layers of the picture, linking description with interpretation. Accordingly, some analysis of contents and iconographic features are inevitable in adventure tourism with its own set of products, props, settings, and actors. For an advertiser to capture our attention, the common method is to show images of the product in a desirable context so that some transference is made between product attributes and the wants and needs of the consumer: if a customer buys the product they are likely to attain the glamour and prestige of the situation depicted in the image.

By featuring a human element in the advertising images, the spectator is drawn into the advertisement and invited to identify or empathise with what is being said and done.

. This is an innovative technique because when a reader looks at an advertisement, their attention is usually drawn immediately to its human aspect. In order to find out the meaning intended by the producer/author of advertisements, these constructed and manipulated images, as described by Dyer (1982), must be taken and ‘deconstructed’ down to their most basic form through content analysis.

 there are two groups in particular that have nevertheless increased in levels of participation: the disabled and ethnic minorities. The existing imagery used and the absence of attention to such issues may very well combine with the image setting to positively detract from such groups seeking to explore these activities

It seems from the imagery that it is less common to stray off the beaten track, which could be noted as an attraction in terms of safety for tourists but may also be a hindrance for some who wish to escape human contact

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, what they mean, and how they are used; the science of signs, first proposed in 1916 by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, but developed in particular in the work of Roland Barthes (France) and C.S. Peirce (USA). Semiotics (or semiology) is based on the premise that all human communication is founded in an assemblage of signs—verbal, aural, and visual—which is essentially systematic.

 Pike, S. (2004). Destination marketing organisations. Oxford: Elsevier

Swarbrooke, J., Beard, C., Leckie, S., & Pomfret, G. (2003). Adventure tourism: The new frontier. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.

Weber, K. (2001). Outdoor adventure tourism: A review of research approaches. Annals of Tourism Research, 28(2), 360–377.

Ryan, C., & Trauer, B. (2005). Adventure tourism and sport – an introduction. In C. Ryan, S.J. Page, & M. Aitkin (Eds.), Taking tourism to the limits, pp. 143 –148. Oxford: Elsevier.

Ewert, A. (1989). Outdoor adventure pursuits: Foundation, models and theories. New York: Publishing Horizons.

Cloke, P., & Perkins, H. C. (1998) ‘Cracking the canyon with the awesome foursome’: Representations of adverture tourism in New Zealand. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 16(2), 185 –218.

Bentley, T.A., Page, S.J., & Laird, I. (2001). Accidents in the New Zealand adventure tourism industry. Safety Science, 38(1), 31 –48.

Macfarlane, R. (2003). Mountains of the mind. London: Granta

Grenier, K. (2005). Tourism and identity in Scotland 1790 –1914: Creating Caledonia. Ashgate: Aldershot.

Since there has been only few studies conducted on Northern Lights tourism (see e.g. Friedman 2012, Rautanen 2012, Amoamo & Boyd 2005, Weaver 2011)

In Northern Lights tourism, the product is a Northern Lights tour, in which the company provides the customer with a service combinations, varying in diversity and scale. Some firms offer only transportation to a place, while some offer clothing, cookies and warm drink, base camp facilities, instructions for photographing and stories.

Nevertheless, from the marketing materials it is sometimes hard to separate the countries selling the same experience. It is more the services and national business policies and practices which separate these areas and services.

Actor-network theory is the sociology of ordering (Duim 2005, 85, Law 1994). Actors take their form and acquire their attributes in their relationships with other actors and an actor is anything that acts or receives activity from others (Duim 2005, 86) and it is in this way, by applying subjectivity to non-human actors, that it differs from more traditional sociological theories.

Law and Hetherington (1999, 2) there are three kinds of materials: bodies, objects and information and media

First, the bodies materialise themselves and others through embowering practices, like guiding, taking part in leisure activities or sleeping in a hotel bed. Secondly, objects in tourism are materialised as sights, attractions, hotels, planes, cars and other natural and artificial objects. Third, information and media are materialised in promotion material, magazines, images and photographs, tickets, social media platforms and apps. Tourism is held together by active sets of relations and interactions in which the human and non-human actors continuously exchange properties and information (Duim 2005, 88).

1.) Don’t go for the Northern Lights; go for the destination. In talking to locals, including our new friend The Aurora Hunter, no one in Iceland had seen the Northern Lights in 3 weeks prior to our sighting. Storms had moved in clouding up the night skies and there just wasn’t much activity going on the sun. The northern lights are weather dependant; therefore, sightings are often inconsistent. This needs to be kept in mind when travelling to specially see the aurora borealis. Although adverts may say otherwise. But, if you really want the best chances of seeing the Northern Lights in Europe, head to Abisko. It’s the driest place in Sweden and has the clearest nights of almost anywhere else in the Aurora belt.

2.) In order to see the Northern Lights, you need a dark, clear night. They are visible from late August to early April anytime during dark hours, which in places like Abisko or Tromsø can be nearly 24 hours a day in winter. There also needs to be solar flares on the sun or solar wind; the Aurora Borealis happens when particles from the sun enter Earth’s atmosphere and collide violently with gas atoms. There are Aurora forecasts and we even use the Aurora Forecast app for iPhone that will predict the aurora activity level. But the fact is, the Northern Lights are unpredictable. We’ve had clear nights when the Aurora forecast showed level 4 (high) activity and we didn’t see anything. The Aurora forecast said level 0 (no activity) on the night we saw them in Myvatn, Iceland

3.) It doesn’t have to be cold to see the Northern Lights; it just has to be dark. Another common misconception people have is that it has to be cold to see the Northern Lights

4.) The weather in the Arctic can change in the blink of an eye. The weather in the Arctic is as notoriously unpredictable as the Northern Lights themselves. It’s not unusual to have sunshine, clouds, rain, sleet, hail, snow and high winds all in the same day. Just because you wake up to crystal clear skies, that doesn’t mean those crystal-clear skies will stick around until Northern Lights viewing time once it’s dark out.

5.) You must put effort into seeing the Northern Lights. As we said before, it must be dark to see the Northern Lights. That may mean you need to get out of the city to avoid light pollution. The Northern Lights are visible in cities like Reykjavik and Tromsø when they are at the strongest, but your best bet is to seek out spots in the Arctic countryside

The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, is a natural display of lights caused by charged solar particles entering the atmo-sphere, typically observable in the Polar Regions in the High North. In recent years Northern Lights tourism has significantly grown in the Arctic regions, par-ticularly in Northern Norway, Finland and Iceland (Heimtun, Jóhannesson, & Tuulentie, 2014) sold as a mystical and romantic experience that contributes to a particular image of the North as mysterious and magical.

Northern Lights tours can be described as a heterogeneous assemblage of diverse entities, including solar wind, electronic particles, the magnetic poles, vehicles, images, tourists, guides, weather, the celestial sky and darkness itself.

Northern Lights tours, as a consumable product, revolve around efforts of appropriating and ordering a flickering and dynamic natural phenomenon through improvised choreography and how this process creates various affective light scapes. A typical Northern Lights tour is very much about ‘stage management’ and indeed the Northern Lights as an attraction has been effectively staged through narratives and marketing material in recent years (see e.g.Heimtun & Viken, 2015; Mathisen,2014).

As the Aurora Borealis intermingles with the gloom of the night sky it engenders an affective light scape that attracts visitors. Describing his encounter with the Northern Lights,Edensor (2010)identifies the most important elements of the ‘affective realm’ as being the Aurora, ‘‘the pervasive dark, the black mass of the land, the temperature, the quiet, and the sound sand gestures of human bodies. This affective landscape provides an environment of energies and capacities, a context within which a body feels and acts” (ibid., p. 236). Every tour is composed of light and darkness as well as a host of other elements and actors that together create a choreography in which tourists participate. The role of the choreographer shifts between various actors. As the Northern Lights tour unfolds, for instance, tour providers engage in stage management andG.T. Jóhannesson, K.A. Lund/Annals of Tourism Research 63 (2017) 183–190185

Currently, Northern Light tours have become a product that is being bought and sold in a specialised field of tourism. Their appearances and dancing acts composed by the interplay of light and darknessplay a key role in a burgeoning sector of winter tourism in the Arctic, mystified and romanticised. As such, their dancing is sold as a unique experience in which one can participate. It can be argued that the Northern Lights have become a crucial symbol for the Arctic as a tourist destination, often reiterating traditional discourses of the north as being an exotic and magical place (Mathisen, 2014). The name ‘‘Aurora Borealis” itself denotesmythical and godlike creatures dancing across the sky, Aurora being the Roman goddess of dawn and Boreas the Greek wordfor the north wind.

Studying tourism in darkness can throw light on the importance of bodies and rhythms and how they intertwine with the surroundings, human and more-than-human, creating tourism experiences as well as contributing to the affective field of destinations

In Northern Norway, for example, it began early this century with marketing campaigns and events organised by Finn mark Reiseliv, the local Destination Management Organisation (DMO) and the Hurtigruten, a coastal steamer company (Heimtun & Viken, 2016). However, during our research on the reasons behind the rise of interest in Northern Norway as a tourist destination, Destination Managers pointed specifically to the 2008 screening of the BBC documentary, Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights. Following this, international winter tourist numbers rose dramatically (Statistikknett, 2015) and the numbers of Northern Lights tour operators in Northern Norway increased from a handful in 2004 to over 40 a decade later.

The significance of these real and imagined social worlds is demonstrated through Goffman's (1959) formulation of ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage behaviour in the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. An on-screen imaginary, much like advertising, is not separate from everyday conduct, but is rather the hyper-ritualisation of everyday life (Goffman, 1974, 1979)

It is in this sense that we aim to trouble front and backstage distinctions to examine the ways in which Northern Norway is being popularly framed and to provide a subtle yet critical comprehension of the power of the imaginary to shape the very way in which individuals apprehend and in turn create social worlds.

These expectations, which frame the tourist experience, are socially shared and collaboratively produced assemblages termed the ‘tourism imaginary’(Salazar, 2012; Salazar &Graburn, 2014). This concept“refers to the sum of practices, images, texts,films, videos, books, websites, and forms of knowledgeP. White, et al.Annals of Tourism Research 78 (2019) 1027392

that, either directly or indirectly, contribute towards the creation and maintenance of spaces as tourist destinations...It also in-volves...a wider collective schema of tropes, metaphors, and other forms of cultural representation and production...”(Meethan,2014, p.241).

These programmes aretypically presented by celebrities, whose sole reason for being on screen is their fame, reflecting our“endlessly recirculated”world, sothat the travelogue destination“becomes a space for [their] performance”(Dunn, 2005b, p.166). Travel series are a form of“ce-lebrity-induced tourism”(Lee, Scott, & Kim, 2008), whereby the presenters'‘para-social’audience relationship (Horton & Wohl,1956), can influence tourist visits (Glover, 2012).

The Northern Lights have several folkloric associations and forthe Sámi, the indigenous people of Northern Norway, disrespecting them causes misfortune (Eather, 1980). Nineteenth-centuryscientific explorers constructed mythical narratives about the Aurora Borealis, which exoticised the“primitive natives”and theirculture (Mathisen, 2014). This type of colonialism (borealism), invokes an interest in the exotic and primitive authenticity of thesubordinated Other, seen in contemporary marketing that links the Aurora to Sámi culture and transports Northern Lights tourists toan“Arctic Fantasyland”(Mathisen, 2014: p.86).

“I spent many hours...to get them to understand. And then I said“you need transport when you come back. I have a big car, you can book me for the whole week”, and so they did.... Most of the filming is from a place out in Lyngen, but...the day before we were at the Finnish border and filmed some Northern Lights there, and they put them in too. It's okay for people who are not from here, but we see it....TV, it's not always things happening in order

The next year the national DMO included footage from the documentary in its television commercials and promotional DVDs and during 2009–2014 invested 42 m NOK on Northern Lights-focused marketing in its key markets of the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden (Innovation Norway, 2014)

Indeed, we could surmise the participants' discussions of the documentary as hyperreality in the making (Baudrillard, 1994). That there are disconnections between what was said in the film and what happened in practice are moot as they are a means of invocation that have specific intimations in terms of how they are experienced (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967)

The staging of frames is significant, not just in terms of the disingenuous nature offilm production to produce interpretations thatare more real than real, to reinterpretGoffman's (1979)analysis of commercial images. Indeed, Goffman draws on the idea of hyper-P. White, et al.Annals of Tourism Research 78 (2019) 1027398

ritualisation and editing to make explicit processes of‘standardisation, exaggeration and simplification’

That the documentary may be considered banal, shows that part of the power of thedocumentary lies in hiding its own mechanisms. Here we make an attempt to marry social theory and ethnographic insights to sketchthe mechanisms behindfilm-induced tourism

The sig-nificance here is not just the ways that Northern Norway is being framed, but how the viewers are all a part of this framing.

heir role is toreproduce an imaginary that is“eventful, rich or fulfilling”and need not represent local realities (Löfgren, 2008: p.86)

explains how this asymmetry comes about and causes the differences in auroral displays near Earth’s poles. The new research finds the differences in aurora are likely caused by squeezing of Earth’s magnetotail — a magnetic tail that extends away from our planet — by the solar wind and the Sun’s magnetic field.

When the solar magnetic field arriving at Earth is pointing in an east-west direction, it interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field differently in the north and in the south. This leads to asymmetric loading of pressure onto the Earth´s magnetic field and introduces a tilt in the Earth’s magnetic field on the nightside of the Earth. The tilt explains why aurora sometimes can have different shapes and occur in different locations in the two polar regions.

The new finding contradicts previous theories about asymmetry, which suggested it was caused by the pulling apart and reconnecting of magnetic field lines in the Earth´s magnetic tail, a process called tail reconnection. The new study finds that, in fact, tail reconnection reduces this asymmetry.

Cultural attractions have become important in development of tourism. Not only do cultural attractions constitute the largest sector of European attraction market. But they are also being placed at the center of urban and rural development strategies and image enhancement programmes. Cultural attractions are held in awe by not only those who travel to gaze upon them. But become important elements of national or even international identity. Culture is considered essential to attracting tourists to many locations. However cultural consumption may  account for a very small amount of total activity. For example, in Venice, tourists who stay overnight only spend 2% of their spending's on cultural activities. The remainder of the money is spent on accommodation, food and shopping.

The bright dancing lights of the aurora are collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere. The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern hemisphere. They are known as 'Aurora borealis'. Auroral displays appear in many colors although pale green and pink are the most common. Shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet have been reported. The lights appear in many forms from patches or scattered clouds of light to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow.

The Northern Lights are the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere. Variations in color are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding.  

Tourism, according to the dictionary is “The theory and practice of touring, travelling for pleasure” (O.E.D). Its roots include the Greek term for a tool used to describe a circle, reflected in the essential feature of tourism, returning to the part of departure. However, it can be argued that a definition suitable for general tourism scholarship has not yet emerged, as most firms have viewed tourists as a segment of a broader market. Governments have also been forced to recognize that tourism has environmental costs---physical, social and cultural--which require monitoring. And some governments in the developed world have recognized that tourism offers a special medium of recreational activity.

There are three approaches to the topic of tourism: economic, technical, and holistic are identified and analysed. An Economic definition of Tourism can be defined as the science, art and business of attracting and transporting visitors, accommodating them and graciously catering to their needs and wants. (McIntosh 1977:ix).

A technical response to tourists is defined as temporary visitors staying at least twenty-four hours in the country visited and the purpose of whose journey can be classified under one of the following headings: (a) leisure (recreation, holiday, health, study, religion, and sport), (b) business, family, mission, meeting.

Holistic definitions attempt to embrace "the whole" essence of a subject. The sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the travel and stay of non-residents, in so far as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not connected to any earning activity (Hunziker & Kraph in Burkart & Medlik 1974:40)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09669580008667354?needAccess=true

What natural wonders id like to focus on?

-Aurora Borealis

-Niagara Falls

-Grand canyon

NOT

- Great Barrier reef

-Harbour Rio janeiro

- Victoria Falls

- Paricutin Volcano Mexico

Potential topics id like to focus on

- How Tourism from these natural wonders effect the enviroment and econemy of these locations

- How Tourism is effected differently in each location. e.g how the northern light tourism differs between Norway and Iceland

- How Science is communicated through tourism

- How Tourism company's use natural wonders for business, sometimes based off myth or folklore

- how oldschool folklore is advertised as if it is present 

- sustainable tourism, how does natural wonders effect this.

This report is the result of fieldwork in Iceland, Finland and Norway. undertaken by tourism researchers in 2014. One aim of the study was to establish comparative knowledge on Northern Lights tours.

During the last decade tourism has boomed in these areas, important destinations being Reykjavik, Tromso and Muonio. With increased interests from tourists from Europe, Asia and Northern America.

In common are also the development of mass tourism in the bigger cities, in regards of the number of tour providers and number of tourists, and a more moderate development in the smaller cities

The Norwegian Northern Lights tours, for instance, tend to be more expensive and they often last longer. In Finland most of the tours are in combination with other outdoor activities and mass tourism is the most noticeable in Reykjavik. Thus, there the tours are the cheapest. Furthermore, in Iceland and Alta mostly local guides are employed, whereas in Finnish Lapland and Tromsø many workers are from other Europeans countries 

 Northern Lights Tourism in Iceland

Northern Lights tourism is a recent product on offer in Iceland. It can be said to have started slowly but steadily by demand from Japanese travellers in the first years of the 21stcentury. Northern Lights tours have also been part of the portfolio of tourist firms for some years but a distinctive break in the positionality of the Northern Lights as a tourist product can be identified in the years 2007 to 2009. At that time, Icelandair, one of two domestically owned airlines offering flights to and from Iceland and part of, the by far the largest tourist firms in the country, Icelandair Group, started to work systematically on the marketing of Northern Lights tours to Iceland from Britain. At that time, they were inspired by the success of Norwegian and Finnish firms offering Northern Lights tours to Northern Scandinavia. When the Icelandic economy crumbled due to financial meltdown in autumn 2008, Icelandair decided to focus their marketing efforts during the winter season on the Northern Lights and offered short city breaks with an added Northern Lights tour, first in Britain and Europe, then later in North America. This turned out to be decisive for the development of Northern Lights tourism in Iceland. Currently Northern Lights are by far the largest and most important winter product of Icelandair as of many other companies. According to Iceland Tourist Board’s visitor survey for the winter season 2013-14 some 40 per cent of foreign guests paid for Northern Lights tours and around 15 per cent mentioned Northern Lights as one of the three most memorable experience during their trips, with only the Blue Lagoon having more mentionings (Iceland Tourist Board, 2014)2.

During the last five years Northern Lights tourism has blossomed. At the same time the rapid increase has also created challenges that providers and authorities constantly need to cope with, not least in regard to infrastructure and accessibility to central spots where it is convenient to see the Northern Lights

Northern Lights Tourism in Norway

Inspired by the winter tourism success in Finnish Lapland, the development of Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis tourism started in earnest in Troms and Finnmark in the early years of the twenty-first century. Back then, Northern Lights tourism was simply one of many products to be developed for individual tourists, mainly in combination with dog sledging tours and evening snow mobile safaris. However, its growth in the last decade has been so rapid that it is now the core winter product in this region (in particular in Tromsø). Moreover, not only has the number of providers and products increased, but so too has the range of product offerings. Today the majority of Northern Lights tourists take individual or group tours by coach or minibus, whilst the cruise-led Northern Lights market has also expanded considerably. 

In 2004-5 Tromsø’s individual tourists, for the first time, were offered one Northern Lights excursion every evening of the week. In the winter season 2013-14 tourists could choose from some 65 products. From 2008-9 Northern Lights (mini)bus trips and Northern Lights photography tours began to be offered. 

In the marketing of Northern Lights tours, the local DMO, Visit Tromsø, separates between Northern Lights hunts and Aurora Experiences . The main aspect of the former type is the possibility to travel long distances in search of the lights. The latter type is more ‘place specific’ and often involves other activities such as snow mobiling, dog sledging and horseback riding.

Northern Lights Tourism in Finland

Northern Lights tourism does not have an independent role in Finnish Lapland’s tourism marketing,  as it has in Northern Norway and Iceland. In Lapland’s tourism strategy (2011-14) Northern Lights are not mentioned at all, the main emphasis is on activity products and productization of Santa Claus. However, Northern Lights trips are arranged in all destinations in Finnish Lapland. For instance, glass igloo accommodation is offered in Levi and in Kakslauttanen, Inari, in order to give the possibility to see the Northern Lights throughout the night. One interesting curiosity was in autumn 2014 when a tourist company searched for a Northern Lights guard who were to alarm the clients if the Lights appeared. In 2013, in Ylläs resort, in the northwest of Lapland, an official decision was made to turn off the street lights in the best Northern Lights period so that the tourists could better see the Lights.