Tourism in Greenland – Expanding the Runway towards Independence

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Dash-8 airplanes lined up on the runway in Nuuk, Greenland. Photo: Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson

October 28, 2024, saw the official opening of Nuuk’s new international airport. Through the extension of the existing runway, the airport has become Greenland’s first civilian transatlantic airport and is expected to bring travelers to Greenland on an unprecedented scale in years to come. Already this summer, the world’s largest airline, United Airlines, has announced twice weekly direct flights over the summer between New York and Greenland’s capital, hailing the promise of a bright future for Greenland tourism.

The travel dust from the first transatlantic carriers had not settled before the – president – elect Donald Trump repeated his wishes, voiced already in his first term, to ‘buy Greenland’. Soon after, his son Donald Trump Junior, landed in Nuuk in his father’s private air jet. During the following 4 hours, he and his entourage would hand out MAGA-caps, invite random residents for lunch and talk to them about their concerns with Greenland’s current position in the Danish realm.

Trump’s continuous stipulations on enrolling Greenland under a United States constituency using economic or military force, might have overshadowed the conversations about tourism development, but in Greenland, the opening of the airport marks the end of the year-long conversation about airports as the big ‘game changer’ for Greenland. So while geopolitical speculations make headlines in newspapers across the globe, Greenland continues to focus on tourism, seeing it as a massive potential for what remains the goal for the majority of its citizens: Independence.

In his New Year speech, Greenland premier Múte B. Egede gave the opening of the new airport considerable attention and pointed to the fact that there was more to come, with new airports opening in in Ilulissat and Qaqortoq and, longer term, in East Greenland.

In his speech, this development of better connectivity in Greenland was directly linked to Greenlandic independence: “With the opening of the new international airport in Nuuk, the world has now truly opened up. This coming summer, it will now be possible to reach us directly from other countries, without first traveling via Denmark, making it possible for us to develop and govern our country more independently” (our translation).

The airport is not the only thing suggesting big changes in Greenlandic tourism. In the week leading up to the airport opening, Greenland’s first tourism law was approved in Greenland’s parliament, Inatsisartut. As argued in Egede’s speech, one of the central tenets with the law is to secure a sustainable tourism development, with a clear emphasis on the social tenet of the concept: “The law considers the framework for a development that clears a path for and takes into account the country’s population. Sustainability is not only about the environment, but it is also about ensuring that it is the Greenlandic people that control their own future. What is central to the law is to create and develop tourism that is adapted and controlled by our country – both in terms of the environment, but also in terms of the people who live there” (our translation).

In spring of 2025, work will also begin on a new and first sector plan for Greenlandic tourism, including new regulation on zoning and development of tourism concessions, which will set the course for future tourism development.

High expectations, great uncertainty

High political and economic expectations are linked to the new tourism infrastructure. For example, the sector plan sets a target that tourism will constitute 40 percent of Greenland’s exports by 2035, an ambitious target according to many.

Despite this economic optimism, there are many lingering concerns about the deep transformations that tourism is expected to carry for Greenlandic society through everything from foreign labor, increased pressure on the housing market, unregulated cruise tourism growth and foreign ownership. Such concerns are addressed by the Greenland Tourism Act which, among other things, requires a two-thirds ownership majority in Greenlandic tourism companies and also implements new cruise and accommodation taxes.

The short-term rental market is also mentioned as an area in need of increased regulation. While such measures are expected to put a lid on the possible overheating, several, such as Greenland’s Business Association, point to an opposite concern, namely that stricter legislation and taxation will stifle or completely slow down a development that many operators have been tripping over for years and that the same government is planning for in its sector plan.

According to such actors, it seems paradoxical to stimulate and put a lid on tourism development at the same time. The very opposite expectations and forecasts among actors manifest the uncertainty around tourism development. It also points to the difficulty of balancing the development of not only more, but also better tourism, which has been discussed in Visit Greenland and the tourism industry for several years under the slogan Towards Better Tourism.

Visit Greenland has long been an advocate of tourism ‘for the benefit of all of Greenland’, an understanding that is also supported by the Government’s ambitious economic goals and focus on social sustainability, where it is also expected to double the number of employees in the industry by 2035. More new taxes and taxation options in the tourism sector are expected to contribute to increased investments in and outside of tourism, both at national and municipal levels. However, with the law’s requirement of 2/3 Greenlandic ownership, the worry is also that needed foreign investments to finance much-needed infrastructure, accommodation and services will be lacking.

There is great uncertainty linked to the direction and cadence of development at what many see as a crucial crossroads. In reality, no one knows for sure what the opening of the airport, in addition to cruise tourism activities on the rise, will bring for Greenland and its inhabitants. Will tourism for instance distribute evenly across the seasons and across regions, or – more likely, be concentrated in time, in the short summer season, and space, risking overtourism in small towns and in fragile natural environments?

Air Greenland, Greenland’s state-owned air carrier, has the ambition to improve air connections in Greenland in the long term by increasing the scale of flights in general. But with increasing foreign competition in the summer months on Air Greenland’s most profitable routes, the question is how this will challenge its business model, where extra income in the summer helps fund less profitable year-round routes to remote areas in Greenland. In that sense, new mobility patterns risk fundamentally changing connectivity in Greenland and improved connectivity to and from Greenland may imply less connectivity within.

Tourism – more than just the economy

So how will Greenlandic tourism develop in the years to come and what will be its desirable outcomes? The above outline of the central points of discussion and conundrums shows that there is simultaneously a concern that development is going too fast and too slow. A more unifying characteristic of the central actors, however, is that most are extremely aware of tourism’s role as a social locomotive – from the Self-Government, Air Greenland and Visit Greenland, through Greenland’s Industry to municipal development departments.

Whether stakeholders wish for foreign investments or a more restrictive investment and ownership policy, tourism is rarely mentioned as an end in itself, but rather as a tool to lift and develop Greenland, the individual destinations, and living conditions and development opportunities for citizens and businesses. For most of these actors, tourism is ‘more than an industry’.

Another characteristic of the debate on tourism is that of identity, belonging and local labor. This debate will probably only become more accentuated as foreign labor and growing foreign interest rises, both in terms of tourism and other resources. Such debates indicate that there is a lot at stake in how tourism develops in the coming years. Not only economically for Greenland and for the individual operators, but also in terms of local and regional development, the labor and housing market and distribution policy and ultimately also for Greenland’s wish and ability to step out of its union with Denmark.

Greenland’s tourism has been under constant development for several decades. However, the expansion of Nuuk Airport and the further infrastructure development in Ilulissat and Qaqortoq in the coming years mark a significant shift in gear for Greenland tourism, a development which is strategically and legislatively supported by new tourism policy.

Things will not stand still in the tourism sector in the coming years, and tourism is bound to feature in discussions on independence in the near future. While the atmosphere might be expected to change a bit when Nuuk welcomes its first visitors from New York this summer, tourism is indeed coming. The recent global attention has significantly increased the destination’s international visibility. It will be relevant to follow how and in what ways Greenland’s new and coming airports will become game changers not only for the tourism sector, but also for the possible formation of a new independent Arctic state.

Carina Ren, Associate professor at Aalborg University, Denmark, head of AAU Arctic. Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson, Professor at University of Iceland, Department of Geography and Tourism.