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Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland

One of the few silver linings in the COVID pandemic has been a new appreciation for, interest in, and engagement with nature. As countries open, and travel becomes accessible again, there is an opportunity to reimagine sustainable nature-based tourism from a therapeutic landscape lens. Framed within...

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Autores principales: Williams, Allison, Ólafsdóttir, Rannveig
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9326961/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35911588
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10713-5
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author Williams, Allison
Ólafsdóttir, Rannveig
author_facet Williams, Allison
Ólafsdóttir, Rannveig
author_sort Williams, Allison
collection PubMed
description One of the few silver linings in the COVID pandemic has been a new appreciation for, interest in, and engagement with nature. As countries open, and travel becomes accessible again, there is an opportunity to reimagine sustainable nature-based tourism from a therapeutic landscape lens. Framed within the therapeutic landscape concept, this paper provides an autoethnographic account of a visitor’s experience of three different natural landscapes in Iceland shortly after the country’s fourth wave of the pandemic. It adds to the understanding of the healing effects of the multi-colored natural landscapes of Iceland. The natural landscapes of interest herein include: the southern part of the Westfjörd peninsula, Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, and the Central Highlands. In totality, the natural, built and symbolic environments worked in synchronicity to produce three thematic results: restoration, awe and concern, all which provided reduced stress, renewed attention, as well as enhanced physical and psycho-social benefits for the autoethnographic visiting researcher. Implications of these restorative outcomes for sustainable nature-based tourism in a post-COVID era are discussed. This paper highlights how health and tourism geographers can work collaboratively to recognize, protect, and sustain the therapeutic elements of natural landscapes, recognized as a cultural ecosystem service. In so doing, such collaborations can positively influence sustainable nature-based tourism development and consumption through proper and appropriate planning and development of such tourism destinations.
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spelling pubmed-93269612022-07-27 Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland Williams, Allison Ólafsdóttir, Rannveig GeoJournal Article One of the few silver linings in the COVID pandemic has been a new appreciation for, interest in, and engagement with nature. As countries open, and travel becomes accessible again, there is an opportunity to reimagine sustainable nature-based tourism from a therapeutic landscape lens. Framed within the therapeutic landscape concept, this paper provides an autoethnographic account of a visitor’s experience of three different natural landscapes in Iceland shortly after the country’s fourth wave of the pandemic. It adds to the understanding of the healing effects of the multi-colored natural landscapes of Iceland. The natural landscapes of interest herein include: the southern part of the Westfjörd peninsula, Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, and the Central Highlands. In totality, the natural, built and symbolic environments worked in synchronicity to produce three thematic results: restoration, awe and concern, all which provided reduced stress, renewed attention, as well as enhanced physical and psycho-social benefits for the autoethnographic visiting researcher. Implications of these restorative outcomes for sustainable nature-based tourism in a post-COVID era are discussed. This paper highlights how health and tourism geographers can work collaboratively to recognize, protect, and sustain the therapeutic elements of natural landscapes, recognized as a cultural ecosystem service. In so doing, such collaborations can positively influence sustainable nature-based tourism development and consumption through proper and appropriate planning and development of such tourism destinations. Springer Netherlands 2022-07-27 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9326961/ /pubmed/35911588 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10713-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Williams, Allison
Ólafsdóttir, Rannveig
Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland
title Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland
title_full Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland
title_fullStr Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland
title_full_unstemmed Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland
title_short Nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a COVID era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in Iceland
title_sort nature-based tourism as therapeutic landscape in a covid era: autoethnographic learnings from a visitor’s experience in iceland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9326961/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35911588
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10713-5
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