Rural tourism will be the subject of a public symposium at UPEI on Wednesday, May 24, 7-9 p.m., in the Alex H. MacKinnon Lecture Theatre, Room 242, Don and Marion McDougall Hall. “Tourism, Place and Identity: Rural Tourism in Iceland and Prince Edward Island” will feature Ms. Gudrun Gunnarsdottir of the Tourism Research Centre in Akureyri, Iceland. She will be joined by a Panel of authorities/practitioners in PEI Tourism, including Dr. Ed MacDonald from the History Department and Ann Worth, Executive Director of Meetings and Conventions PEI. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of tourists visiting Iceland, so that tourism density there now rivals that of Prince Edward Island. The nature of the tourism industry is broadly similar in both islands – generally seasonal, with a heavy stress on cultural and environmental resources. Also, in both islands there has been a concerted effort by policy-makers to utilize tourism as a community-development tool for the more rural areas. This has met with mixed success – and has raised a whole new set of issues. There is benefit for both islands in sharing experiences, insights, and possible solutions. Gudrun Gunnarsdottir, presently Director of the Icelandic Research Centre at the University of Akureyri in northern Iceland, is a graduate of the MBA in Tourism Management program at the University of Guelph. She is a specialist in rural tourism. From 2011 to 2014, she worked on a study, “The Entangled Web: Tourism, Place and Identity,” exploring how three small Icelandic communities have embraced the ever increasing role of tourism. The symposium is sponsored by the Institute of Island Studies, UPEI’s Vice-President Research and Academic, and the Rural Policy Learning Commons. For further information, please contact (902) 894-2881 or iis@upei.ca.