International Tourism in the Arctic under COVID-19: A Telecoupling Analysis of Iceland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A good paper but it would be nice if you can also include a table of comparison on how the management of the tourist spot in Iceland was conducted before, during and after the pandemic restrictions for easy understanding to the readers.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I want to thank the opportunity to review the manuscript titled "International tourism in Iceland: before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions". This article aims to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected tourism by comparing the data before, during, and after the lockdown using the telecoupling framework. 

This article is not a traditional research paper in social science, especially in the field of tourism. There is no justification for research gaps or the development of hypotheses. The article is highly descriptive and the findings are all expected.  In addition, from the view of traditional social science research, the article makes no theoretical and very few practical contributions. Thus, this article is not qualified for being published as a research paper. 

I believe the current article is a report that documents critical tourism-related data of Iceland before, during, and after the padamic. From this perspective, the article is well-written and provides a comprehensive picture of tourism activity and its impacts on Iceland. However, I recommend the authors expand the discussion/interpretation of the data rather than just describe the data. Furthermore, it will be helpful if the authors can provide a table that summarizes the major findings of the study. 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is a timely study on tourism and environmental impacts during the Covid-19 pandemic using the framework of telecoupling. Despite the emphasis on making tourism more sustainable, the paper lacks discussion on making tourism more sustainable in Iceland. With an addition of how Iceland can continue it's tourism industry with minimal environmental impact, this paper can be accepted. The paper also needs minor grammatical copyediting - for instance in line no. 64 the phrase like "not very many ships" doesn't make sense. Or line no. 179, the whole sentence needs removal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

YES  

The research background is described satisfactorily and presenting the facts. Elaborate more deeply on the phenomena studied.

 

                              

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

YES  

It presents sufficient theoretical background and literature reviews.

                              

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

MUST BE IMPROVED     

Specify the research design used and explain the reasons of using this research approach as well as how the data analysed.

 

                              

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

CAN BE IMPROVED

Please ensure to present the finding and discussion by theme based on the purposes of the study.      

 

                    

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

CAN BE IMPROVED        

The results need to be specified as per research objectives

                              

Is the article adequately referenced?

YES  

Need to add references research methods used

                              

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

CAN BE IMPROVED

conclusion MUST discuss the following areas:

1. Researcher's view why the case is interesting to be investigated

2. Write conclusions based on the research questions

3. Research Implications and limitations

4. Suggestion for further scientific research related to this finding

         

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors did a great job revising the article and clarifying the nature of the paper. As I mentioned in the previous round of review, this article is very well-written and should be accepted as a tourism report.