Following the gradual decline of Arctic sea ice, shipping using Arctic routes increased from 2010. This led to an upsurge in the number of studies investigating the potential of Arctic maritime routes. A systematic literature review was conducted to assess the extant literature from 1980 to 2017 on comparative studies between Arctic and traditional routes. This review also aimed to provide an initial understanding on route choice decision-making factors and to contribute to the literature by providing suggestions for future research and methodological considerations. The competitiveness of Arctic routes is evaluated from both economic and environmental perspectives. Research themes and methodological characteristics are analysed in order to establish an evidence base in Arctic shipping literature. It is identified that analytical research methods and transport cost models are mainly employed. The results indicate that although Arctic routes can be more cost-effective and energy efficient compared to traditional ones, especially in the long-term, they can mainly serve as seasonal alternatives for bulk and specialised shipping in the short-term.

This paper investigates the feasibility of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) using a speed optimisation model to minimise the required freight rate, by employing current data from a shipowner, by secondary data, conducting petroleum product transport on the NSR. The oil product tanker segment is used to assess route alternatives taking into account distance, ship size, ice breaking fees, fuel types and prices. Environmental policy elements are included in the cost analysis to account for low sulphur fuels from 2020, a prospective ban on the use of heavy fuel oil in the Arctic, and a possible global fuel tax.

Innovation and the development of new services are important strategic features to ensure the growth and sustainable wealth for industries where customers have many choices, as is the case in tourism sector. In this context, the present research comes to connect the local sustainable tourism development with the sporting events, and to come up with relevant proposals for the reference area, but also for their generalization in the whole tourist areas. Based on the research purpose, a quantitative research was conducted on a sample of 448 residents, randomly selected from a sampling frame. Several scales from previous studies were used to collect primary data, and they were adapted according to the research purpose. Research findings indicate that the acceptance of sustainable tourism development through sports can be predicted by several variables, such as the economic impact (b = 0.343), residents’ attitude towards sports events (b = 0.287), and citizens’ tendency to entrepreneurship (b = 0.113). Additionally, sports events affect the tendency of citizens towards entrepreneurship (r = 0.519, p < 0.01). In conclusion, the impact of sports events is multiple, and it affects many aspects of a tourism destination, and the effect of sports events on the destination is connected with the tendency of citizens towards entrepreneurship related to sports events.

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