РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫЕ И СЕЗОННЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ВЪЕЗДНОГО ТУРИЗМА В ИСЛАНДИЮ

Abstract

Iceland is one of the three leading countries in Europe in terms of the share of tourism in the country's economy, while not having a warm climate and specializing in ecological tourism. The most significant growth in tourism occurred in the 2010s, the inbound tourist flow increased more than 4 times, which caused the problem of overtourism. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has suspended the further development of international tourism. The changes in the geography of tourism within the country over the period from 2007 to 2019 are also of research interest. The aim of our study was to identify the geographical features of the inbound tourist flow distribution in Iceland. As a result of cartographic and statistical analysis, the regions of the country most visited by foreign tourists were identified (including tourists from the five leading countries: the USA, Great Britain, Germany, China and France), the tourist load was calculated, seasonal and geographical differences in the distribution of inbound tourist flow across the country were determined using the coefficients of seasonality and tourist flow centralization. We have found that the increase in the volume of the tourist flow reduced the seasonality, however, it practically did not affect the regional distribution proportions, mainly due to the different transport accessibility (Сapital and Southern regions are the most popular among tourists). The article presents a methodology for calculating the tourist attraction index which can be used to assess the attractiveness of a territory for tourists from different countries, to perform cross-country comparisons, as well as to assess the importance of the country's tourist market in the world and predict the recovery of tourism after the removal of sanitary restrictions.