An acoustic perspective on nature-based tourism experience: The soundscape of dog sledding, Lapland

Recently, there has been a growing interest in understanding the relationship between sounds and the co-creation of tourism experience. For instance, an interdisciplinary research group formed by scholars from five European universities is currently exploring the acoustic experience of tourists visiting urban destinations by using the case of Lisbon. The study is part of a three-year research project called “Sounding out the Tourist City”. In Finland, the Lapland marketing and communication company House of Lapland and Visit Finland launched in April a new campaign called “Sound of Lapland”, which offers a collection of authentic sounds taken from the wilderness and local life in Finnish Lapland. Although the relevance of sounds as part of tourism spaces has begun to be acknowledged across both academia and industry, there is still a limited body of literature on the subject. The focus of the literature has been on three research perspectives: noise pollution and its impact on tourist experiences, the importance of natural quiet acoustic environments and the role of sound as an element of multisensory experiences.