Search results

This paper aims to determine the role of heritage tourism in Shetland Island destination development and how this links to tourism public policy in island communities.

The study is conducted in the Shetland Islands, located off the north coast of Scotland, UK. Descriptive and inductive approaches are utilized to enable the researchers to recognize multiple social structures and draw conclusions from observations and specific information. Primary research focuses on semi‐structured interviews with key informants. Data is analyzed via a mix of content analysis and interpretation of the responses through a connected narrative approach.

Seasonality is a key feature of Shetland Island tourism, alongside other key limitations to growth including transport links and climatic conditions. Potential conflicts exist between tourism stakeholders and their perceptions of the effectiveness of the heritage tourism public policy in Shetland, though overall stakeholder collaboration succeeds in enhancing heritage conservation and development.

While the findings relate specifically to the Shetland Islands, the general conclusions offer an example of best practice concerning tourism public policy for heritage‐focused tourism in island communities, which could be used in comparable destinations.

The choice of the Shetland Islands as an example of a cold water island destination offers the opportunity to extend existing research and examine how the community of Shetland embraces the opportunities afforded by tourism as an alternative to traditional industries.

Critically reflecting upon the role of and integrative function that relocalisation of agri-food plays in the development of what we call rural and regional ‘webs’ of interconnection, this chapter revisits two regional case studies in Devon and Shetland, UK. Exploring the challenges and continuities in the unfolding of the rural web, we pay particular attention to the role that agri-food initiatives play in mobilising distinctive rural and regional development processes. Although we point in both cases to the marginalisation of agri-food and its potential centrality in rural development, it is clear that this fails to disappear completely. The trends in these two rural regions, at either ends of the UK archipelago, suggest that the combinational effects of declines in multi-functional agri-food support, on the one hand, and a neo-liberalised retraction of non-agricultural rural development support on the other, are providing a potential and chaotic new governance squeeze which is likely to severely reduce the massive but latent adaptive capacity embedded in the rural eco-economy. Indeed, a more multi-functional governance and policy-based approach, based upon creating conditions for the eco-economic rural web to flourish needs to find ways of harmonising different aspects of the post-carbon landscape such that its various segments (energy, tourism, agriculture, creative industries, etc.), can work in synergy with one another. To conclude, we argue that such fragmented and competing conditions as those revealed in both case study areas are unlikely to be sufficiently capable of meeting the new national and global demands for food security which have risen up the political agenda since our earlier phases of field work.

At the beginning of the 1970's one of the most peripheral parts of the British Isles, by the end of the decade it could be argued that Shetland, because of oil, had become one of the most central places in the economic geography of Britain. This article describes some of the changes that have occured in the social and economic organisation of one Shetland community between 1971 and 1979.

Economist’s conceptualisations of managers as rational utility‐maximising beings stands in contrast to cognitive models which see managers as possessing limited and incomplete knowledge which they use to “generate” subjective interpretations and assumptions about competitive strategy and rivalry. Using data from interviews with knitwear producers in the Shetland Isles, Scotland, discusses how perceptions of competition are enacted through social interaction between knitwear producers. In addition to supporting the existence of industry groups, these data suggest that this process occurs at a deeper level of analysis, limiting perceptions of competition at both industry and individual levels. Discusses how membership of a trade association can facilitate marketing and cooperation but may, in the process, inadvertantly constrain managers’ ability to conceptualise and respond to changing market conditions. The implications of these issues for strategic planning are considered.

Industry's euphoria over North Sea oil is not shared by the conservationists, who fear damage to wildlife and the coastline of NE Scotland. And many of the Shetland islanders view the oil boom as a threat to their traditional way of life. But there are encouraging signs of a workable compromise between industry and local councils. Report by Jack McGill. Pictures: Dennis Coutts.