Cross-border tourism development : A case study of the Öresund Region

Sammanfattning: Cross-border tourism development have become increasingly popular the last decades and especially within the European Union through Interreg-programmes. The contemporary research have mainly focused on the advantages and challenges associated with such collaborations with a perspective on visitors and private entrepreneurs in border regions. There are however an unfortunate lack of research on the role of local governments such as municipalities in cross-border tourism collaborations. Therefore the aim of this study is to analyse the interest and attitudes among public actors towards cross-border tourism development, and to identify challenges facing these on an interregional level in cross-border tourism collaborations. The case study have been the Öresund Region between Sweden and Denmark where recently a large scale cross-border platform was implemented party focusing on tourism development in the region. A qualitative approach has been utilized with semi-structured interviews focusing on advantages and challenges associated with cross-border tourism development among public actors in the region. The analysis have shown that there is a great interest among the informants for large scale tourism cooperation in order to reach distant markets and to become a stronger competitor on the global market. Identified challenges mainly concern uneven political power structures which may lead to barriers for further cooperation’s.