Nordic Food and Tourism

Norway created a National Tourism Strategy for 2030. Food plays a central role in the report. We discuss the many opportunities that exist at the intersection of food and tourism.

How tourism develops can have major ripple effects (good and bad) on a country’s culture, natural resources, economic development, and its people. Bård Jervan is a Senior Partner at Mimir, which is a leading tourism development consultancy in Norway. He was also deeply involved in developing Norway’s new national tourism strategy, which was delivered to the government last year. I first heard about Bård’s work at the conference Nordic Food in Tourism. I was fascinated by how the industry is looking at food to design tourism experiences and promote regional development. In this conversation, we discuss what sustainable tourism is and how the industry must adopt a win-win perspective that adds positive value for visitors, local communities, our planet, and big industry.

Norway’s Lofoten Islands

Related Links

🍽 More interviews on food & tourism

✈️ Norway’s Tourism Strategy for 2030

🍷 Climate change and the development of a Nordic wine region

🚙 A foodie roatrip around Iceland by Chef Gunnar Karl Gíslason

🐟 Opportunities around Norwegian seaweed

🇳🇴 More interviews from Norway

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Episode Transcript

Analisa Winther, Nordic FoodTech Podcast Host  2:23 

Hello, Bård. Welcome to the Nordic FoodTech Podcast. I think we should start today's conversation about you and just give a little background on who you are and how you got into tourism.

Bård Jervan, Mimir  2:36 

I got into tourism through my education 40 years ago. 25 years ago, I started a consultancy called Mimir with a former colleague. We’re eight consultants and we have been working with the development of tourism in Norway for the last 25 years. So, you can say that the consultancy is kind of focused around what can we do to develop tourism as a business, create more working places, and develop possibilities for living all over Norway. We also do regional planning together with the regional authorities. We do some marketing studies and we also do development of regions’ identity as a tourist destination.

Analisa Winther, Nordic FoodTech Podcast Host  3:30 

And you are part of writing Norway's National Tourism Strategy with a focus on 2030. Can you just talk a little bit about the inception of that report? Why it came about that you should make a tourism strategy and then what the process was for writing it?