Unplanned Development of Literary Tourism in Two Municipalities in Rural Sweden

Abstract

Recently, artistic places and places known from movies have induced an increase in tourism. However, rapid development also challenges the rural planning authorities who are not prepared to manage the high number of tourists. In this paper focus is put on two rural municipalities in southern Sweden. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize and compare tourism development and tourism planning in these municipalities. This was accomplished by mapping tourism facilities and by in‐depth interviews with the local tourism managers. It is argued that tourism planning should be an integrated part of the rural planning process for achieving sustainable development. However, the case studies show that tourism planning does not reach this requirement. Although tourism is important to the local labor market, the municipal authorities are barely engaged in tourism at all. Instead tourism planning was outsourced to public‐private companies representing mainly the interests of the involved tourism entrepreneurs.