According to new figures, American tourists will outnumber Icelanders in their own country by the end of the year.
Iceland
has welcomed 325,522 American tourists so far this year up to the end
of September, according to data released from the Icelandic Tourism
Board. The country’s total population is 332,000.
The
country has seen a dramatic increase in American tourists since 2010,
but the increase in the past two years is particularly staggering. In
2014, the country only had 152,104 American visitors—that number has
doubled.
Iceland’s tourism
board began aggressively advertising to travelers in 2010, part of the
increase can perhaps be attributed to Icelandair’s free stopover
program, which allows Americans to experience the country on an extended
layover while on their way to Europe. And
Game of Thrones shot much of its third season in the country, giving Americans even more motivation to visit.
The
dramatic rise in tourism has put some strain on the country’s
resources. Tourists fly into the Keflavik airport in the south of the
country, just outside of Reykjavik, and often take the same routes. They
flock to the capital and the sights in southern Iceland, including
Gulfoss waterfall, Thingvellir national park, and Geysir geothermal
park. While Iceland has generally embraced the foreigners, not all
locals are happy about the overcrowding.
“It’s like the city is not my city any more,” Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic politician, poet and activist
told The Telegraph.
She said that her political party aims to cap the number of tourists
visiting natural sites around the country and introduce a hotel tax that
would fund improvements for Iceland’s tourist infrastructure.
The
Icelandic government is currently in the middle of a nine-year tourism
plan (ending in 2020) that will improve the infrastructure at tourist
sites: “The development of tourism infrastructure shall aim at
protecting nature, and the tourism strategy shall aim at incorporating
the concepts of sustainability and responsibility for Iceland’s culture
and natural surroundings,” the plan states.
Earlier
this year, Iceland tourism authorities launched a program to educate
visitors on how to respect and maintain the country’s natural sites.
By
the end of the year, Iceland expects to have hosted 1.5 million
tourists from around the world. In 2010, that number was only 459,000.
The tourism board expects that Iceland will have 2 million annual
tourists by 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment