**1. Introduction and Background**

Travel and tourism are important parts of the economy for many countries, and the exchange rate has a considerable impact on cross-border travel. This type of tourism is sensitive to changes in exchange rates, prices, and revenues Stabler et al. (2009). Many researchers have focused on the impacts of variations in currencies on overnight stays at hotels Corgel (2003), but few have explored how these rate fluctuations influence foreign travelers to campsites.

Camping tourism has traditionally been associated with Europe, Australia, and North America, but there is rising interest in Asia Lee (2020). There also seems to be increased attention toward campsites in Europe and North America Ram and Hall (2020). Camping provides flexibility and can easily be combined with other activities, such as fishing and mountain climbing, allowing families to closely interact with nature. Several authors have called for more analysis on camping tourists Rogerson and Rogerson (2020). Therefore, this article aimed to provide a little more insight into this sector.

The purpose of this paper was to further investigate this topic by using data from Norway. Knowledge about these patterns is useful for tourism industry planning in Norway. With a small open economy that has its own floating exchange rate regime, there has been substantial instability in the rate, especially in the last 10 years due to changes in

**Citation:** Opstad, Leiv, Randi Hammervold, and Johannes Idsø. 2021. The Influence of Income and Currency Changes on Tourist Inflow to Norwegian Campsites: The Case of Swedish and German Visitors. *Economies* 9: 104. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/economies9030104

Academic Editor: Robert Czudaj

Received: 3 June 2021 Accepted: 1 July 2021 Published: 13 July 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

the price of oil, which is a major driver of the Norwegian economy (see Figure 1). Since 2014, the Norwegian krone has significantly weakened compared to, for example, the euro and Swedish krone.

**Figure 1.** The exchange rates of the Swedish currency and the euro. Source: Norges Bank.

Although overnight stays at campsites are dominated by domestic demand (over 70 percent), foreigners make up an important customer group. Foreign visitors have longer holidays and significantly higher 24 h consumption than domestic visitors Innovation Norway (2019). Visitors are mainly from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark (see Figure 2). In this report, we limited the analysis to German and Swedish tourists.

**Figure 2.** Guest country of origin, percent. Source: Statistics Norway.

Compared to hotels, campsites make up a small proportion of total accommodations (see Figure 3), and even foreign tourists frequently combine camping with stays in hotels. The proportion of people staying in campsites has decreased since 2013.

**Figure 3.** Picture (**a**) shows which type of accommodation foreign tourists chose in 2019. Picture (**b**) shows the development in overnight stays at camping sites and hotels in the years 2013 to 2019. Source: Statistics Norway.

The use of campsites in Norway is highly seasonal, with most people visiting in the summer months (see Figure 4).

**Figure 4.** Seasonal composition of stay at campsites. Source: Statistics Norway.

The factors that influence the demand for foreign tourism are Stabler et al. (2009):


In this paper, the focus was on the first four variables. According to standard economic theory, higher income leads to increased demand. A relatively high price in the visiting country or higher exchange rate makes it less attractive to travelers. If there is no such issue in competing destinations, a substitution effect may occur. However, there might also be complementarity since many tourists visit several countries at the same time. The aim of this article was to estimate these effects for German and Swedish visitors who stay at Norwegian campsites.

We estimated possible relationships by applying logarithmic regression and using publicly available time series data. It was of interest to see how changes in the exchange rate influenced the inflow of tourists given the option of alternative destinations. Swedish visitors would consider not only the relationship between the effective exchange rate between Norway and Sweden, but also the value relative to other countries.

Foreign tourists visiting Norway must contend with high prices of services and goods compared with most other countries Dybedal et al. (2003). However, this effect has diminished over the last several years due to the depreciation of the currency and its substantial short-term fluctuation. The question is: What impact has this had on the foreign demand for trips to Norwegian camps? Since visitors calculate the costs measured in their own currency, changes in rates will have a direct impact on their budgets.

The decision to travel is made before one goes on holiday Stabler et al. (2009). In the analysis of the tourist market, one must take this into account. Therefore, it is more accurate to use the exchange rate at the time of the decision and not at the time of travel. There is much discussion in the literature about the length of this time lag. An examination of bookings at Norwegian hotels showed that the average difference between booking and arrival was about four months.
