Cultural Landscapes of Tourism and Hospitality: Character, Management and Perceptions of the Tourism-related Cultural Landscapes.

A general assumption has been held that the tourism industry of rural Norway depend on a well managed cultural landscape. This assumption, however, has never been satisfactorily scientifically tested. The objective is therefore to increase the knowledge c oncerning the relation between landscapes influenced by agriculture, the cultural heritage and their utilization by the tourism industry. One R&D challenge will be to model the cultural landscape of Norway, specifically the deforested outfield landscape. This will be achieved by predictive modelling in GIS. The results will be buffered against the tourism travel and hospitality pattern, as well as protected cultural heritage sites. Another R&D challenge will be to detect the effects, causes and patterns o f ongoing re-growth, as well as modelling the probability of future changes. This will be achieved by linking local studies of landscape changes to the national model of probability for changes. Finally, it is not obvious if and how re-growth might have a ny impact on leisure travel patterns and tourists landscape perceptions. Therefore, studies of landscape perceptions among tourists will be a major R&D task. This requires a qualitative approach where the perceivers agricultural and historical knowledge i s approached and seen in relation to their understandings of cultural landscapes and heritage sites along established tourism routes and destinations. The modest co-operation among farmers, tourism and authorities regarding the cultural landscape could be improved with models of co-operation and systematized management of tourism routes and destination. Finally, the future landscape management should be guided by a monitoring programme. This work will contribute to improved tourism infrastructure, future advertisement, landscape and heritage management and co-operation between involved parties. It will focus on control system, future landscape changes and process planning for systematized landscape management.