Tourism “reaches unsustainable level”

As expected, 2022 became a record year for tourism, juding by hotel statistics.

“Last year’s figures were slightly higher than previous record from 2019,” says Guðrið Højgaard, CEO of Visit Faroe Islands.

“But slightly higher is not good enough considering that several new hotels have opened since 2019 and our capacity to accommodate tourists has doubled.”

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Finn Danberg, who heads Jarðir, the association of farmers and landowners, believes that the Faroes cannot accommodate more tourists regardless of hotel capacity.

“Unless we make some signficant changes to our domestic tourism offerings, taking in more tourists would become unsustainable,” he says.

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“As we all know, most tourists go to the same places – Mykines, Saksun, Gásadalur, Tjørnuvík, etc. – and these places are overburdened by tourists as it is.”

Danberg adds that some restrictions are needed to preserve the local flora, fauna and people affected by the tourism boom, and such restrictions are difficult to implement amid a continued rise in tourist numbers.

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“There is no simple solution here. It takes time to build the necessary infrastructure to manage these large streams of tourists,” he says.

“We need to create new, more evenly spread, tourist attractions across the islands, and we could perhaps look at ways to extend the tourist season.”

Read the Faroese versions of this article here and here.

More Faroese News in English.