- Direct flights to Greenland mark new era for fisheries-dependent island
- Cruises offer economic benefits but pose environmental risks to polar regions
- Hurtigruten investing in technology to reduce cruise ship emissions
- Stricter regulations needed to manage impact of tourist numbers
- Need for balanced economic strategies to curb over-reliance on tourism
This June, a United Airlines plane will touch down in Nuuk, capital of Greenland. The Boeing 737 aircraft will look unremarkable as it decelerates down the runway – but its arrival, after a four-hour flight from Newark, New Jersey, is set to mark the beginning of a new era for the world’s largest island.
Greenland – a vast territory that is home to fewer than 60,000 people – has until now remained at the very edge of tourist map. Intrepid visitors seeking to explore its frozen expanses have had to take a flight from Denmark or Iceland, then change planes at a remote airport at Kangerlussuaq in western Greenland, which had the only landing strip big enough to handle international flights.
But a new 2,200-metre runway at Nuuk means the capital’s airport can now cope with larger aircraft, allowing United Airlines to offer the first direct flights from the United States.
The impact of a U.S. connection will be “transformative” for Greenland, says Dwayne Menezes, managing director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative, a London-based think-tank.
“Tourism, for a resource-dependent economy like Greenland, which is almost entirely dependent on fisheries, represents a good way to build greater resilience through economic diversification.”
Greenland is only beginning to appear in tourist brochures, but other parts of the polar regions have been well-trodden by tourists for decades.
For many visitors, the preferred way to see the Arctic is aboard a cruise ship, which offers spectacular views of towering fjords and polar wildlife, alongside warmth, comfort and an endless supply of food and drink. Around 1.5 million cruise passengers visit Norwegian ports on cruise ships each year. The number of cruise ships docking in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost settlement on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, has more than doubled in the past decade.
At the other end of the world, a cruise journey around Antarctica remains an exclusive and very expensive form of tourism, though one that is rapidly growing in popularity. More than 120,000 tourists reached the southern continent in the 2023-24 season. Visitor numbers have increased more than tenfold in the past 30 years.
Cruise ships have long been a controversial presence in the polar regions, however. Many experts are concerned by emissions from cruise vessels, as well as the danger of fuel leaks and disturbance to wildlife.
Arctic tourism researcher Elina Hutton warns there is no way to escape the reality that the cruise industry is damaging sensitive polar ecosystems. “It’s a huge impact, it’s a negative impact,” she says. “It can’t be sustainable.”
Hutton believes Arctic governments need to put tighter controls on cruise ships to restrict the number of visitors. But she also raises larger questions about the industry’s place in the Arctic. “Do we need to be able to travel everywhere? Do we need to be able to fly to Antarctica and cruise to the North Pole? I know it would be fun – but is it something that we need to be able to do?”
Cruise companies, of course, respond that tourism brings much needed economic benefits to isolated communities – and some, at least, can point to progress in mitigating their environmental impacts.
Hedda Felin, CEO of Norwegian cruise operator Hurtigruten, tells The Ethical Corporation that the company has spent 100 million euros on a “very extensive environmental upgrade programme” for its current fleet. New technology has reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%, while half of its vessels are now partially powered by battery packs. Felin says these measures have cut the fleet’s overall CO2 emissions by 25%.
Hurtigruten is also experimenting with revolutionary new ship designs. By 2030, the company hopes that some of its ships will be propelled through the Arctic waters by enormous sails coated with solar panels to take advantage of the power offered by the midnight sun in summer. Huge battery banks aboard the vessels would provide back-up power.
“The ambition is to have a zero-emission ship – as close to zero as possible,” says Felin. The measures will help Hurtigruten prepare for strict rules set to come into force in 2032, in which only zero-emission vessels will be allowed to sail into World Heritage Sites around Norway’s fjords. Meanwhile, Hurtigruten’s CEO agrees – perhaps surprisingly – that cruise visits need to be carefully regulated and even restricted in certain areas.
“I think the cruise industry needs stricter regulations,” she says. This is partly about ensuring a level playing field. While Hurtigruten can point to various environmental improvements, Felin laments that other operators appear less concerned about adhering to best practices. “Norway, and vulnerable areas in general, will benefit from a stricter and a more aware strategy.”
She suggests, for example, that a regulation preventing the use of highly polluting heavy fuel oil on cruise ships around Svalbard could be extended along the entire Norwegian coast. And Felin agrees that certain areas should restrict the size of cruise ships and number of passengers. Five thousand tourists disembarking from a liner in a small Arctic community can be “very overwhelming”, she says, noting that Hurtigruten limits its vessels to around 400 people.
One of the dangers of mass tourism, in the polar regions and globally, is that isolated communities become overdependent on foreign holidaymakers.
Iceland worked hard to attract more tourists following its devastating financial collapse in 2008, which left the country needing to fill a gaping hole in its economy. More than two million tourists now descend on the country each year, compared with fewer than 500,000 before the crash.
One community that has felt the effects is Isafjordur, a small town in the remote Westfjords peninsula that has become one of the cruise ship capitals of Iceland. Tourists have helped revitalise the local economy and compensate for a decline in the fishing industry. But Isafjordur is now so reliant on cruise tourism that any drop-off in visitors would pose a major threat to livelihoods.
For this reason, locals are worried about a newly imposed cruise ship tax. From January, cruise visitors to Iceland have had to pay a daily tax of 2,500 Icelandic krona – around $19 – to travel on a cruise ship. Sigridur Julia Brynleifsdottir, mayor of Isafjordur, told The Ethical Corporation that 196 cruise ships are booked in for this summer, and 176 for next year, but just 84 ships have confirmed visits for 2027. Given that cruise ships typically book their slots in Isafjordur two years in advance, the 2027 season looks set to be a quiet one, as many cruise companies boycott Iceland over the tax.
The mayor says a major fall in tourists will have “huge consequences” for the area. Others are more sanguine. Asa Marta Sveinsdottir, researcher at the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, notes that cruise tourism is a multi-billion-dollar industry that could easily absorb the modest burden of the tax.
She points to a “power imbalance” between cruise liners and tiny communities, given that cruise companies can threaten to adjust their itineraries to remove destinations that attempt to impose restrictions or levy extra fees.
In the Westfjords, she reports, the vast majority of people want cruise ships to keep visiting, despite being “very much aware” that local infrastructure struggles to handle thousands of daily visitors in the summer.
Asa Marta argues that Iceland needs to learn to be more assertive in dealing with the cruise industry. “We are the attraction. They want to come and see us. We can put boundaries and limits.”
Back in Greenland, Menezes of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative says there is a need for urgency in developing infrastructure so that tourists can reach multiple areas rather than overloading certain locations, as has happened in Iceland.
“This is my fear,” he says. “If you don’t build the infrastructure at the same time that you are expanding the airports and bringing the tourists, we’re going to have a sudden surge in the number of tourists, and they will have nowhere to stay and no way to travel.”
Hotel rooms in Ilulissat, famed for its dogsledding experiences and views of icebergs floating down the nearby fjord, are already close to maximum occupancy in summer, even before the new flights start operating, Menezes says.
But he praises the Arctic Circle Road, a “brilliant project” to connect Kangerlussuaq with Sisimiut, the second largest town in Greenland.
“Instead of having all the tourists congregate in Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq, now you’re spreading them out along this very long corridor connecting the two,” says Menezes. “And the people are much happier because that’s what they’re going to Greenland for: to see the muskox, to see the Northern Lights, to live in the wilderness.”
As the island stands on the cusp of a new era, policymakers can draw on plenty of lessons from Iceland and other Arctic neighbours. If Greenland can manage the growth of tourism more carefully than elsewhere in the region, the benefits could be enormous.
“There’s no country that can offer more in terms of tourism than Greenland in the Arctic,” says Menezes. (Reuters)
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