Towards tourism innovation: A critical review of public polices at the national level

Innovation is increasingly becoming important in a destination context for the purpose of achieving competitive advantage. Although government involvement is arguably inevitable in any tourism development at the national level, there are currently a paucity of studies focusing on public policies and innovation in a non-knowledge intensive sector such as tourism. This paper reviews tourism development policies and documents in Norway at the national level to identify the current government initiatives and effectiveness of the strategies put in place to foster tourism innovation. The findings indicate that the policies are mostly general and superficial. Although tourism innovation is a priority, the government's role may be too passive as much of tourism innovation is dependent on private sector initiatives.