Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Síða 10

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2014
high calibre of his performance, and
his repeated proclamations of undying
love for Iceland through various social
media channels, he made the appar-
ently unforgivable mistake of greeting
an audience in Kópavogur with “Hello,
Reykjavík!” Icelandic media sources
were quick to underline this fact, pos-
sibly wilfully ignoring Kópavogur being
right next door to Reykjavík. Justin, if
you’re reading this, the Grapevine is on
your side. Kópavogur isn’t a real town;
it is a satellite of the capital. Everyone
knows this.
NATO Secretary General An-
ders Fogh Rasmussen paid a
visit to Iceland, too. Only instead of
singing to a crowd of thousands, he
held a press conference with Prime
Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugs-
son and Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi
Sveinsson wherein he emphasised
that “I count on Iceland’s support as
we make the Alliance even fitter, faster
and more flexible.” Which means, for
those of us living here, that we can
expect more low-flying fighter jets ter-
rifying the locals and the wildlife in the
more far-flung regions of the country.
Hooray militarism!
Speaking of some of the more
far-flung regions of the country,
the Westfjords has been getting the
short end of the stick lately. First, it
finally came to the attention of people
living in the capital area that a single
weather station on a frighteningly cold
promontory has been used to report
the temperature and wind speed of
the entirety of northwest Iceland. Sec-
ond, all phone and internet service for
Ísafjörður and the southern Westf-
jords just dropped out for about seven
hours. It might be ironic for a maga-
zine called the REYKJAVÍK Grapevine
to point this out, but there is more to
Iceland than the capital—although
sometimes it’s hard to gauge how
many people are aware of this.
Of course no News In Brief would
be complete without a good ol’
fashioned animal news story, and
these past two weeks have seen a few.
Two sheep tried to escape from the Ár-
bær farm museum, eluding capture for
an undisclosed amount of time before
a local managed to capture them and
return them to custody, which should
make you think twice before you use
“sheep” to mean an obedient follower.
In more spectacular news, the Lagar-
fljót Worm is real, the “Truth Com-
mittee” which began investigating
the lake monster has concluded. This
conclusion was based on a video of
what was two years ago confirmed to
be some netting twisting in an icy river.
Because who needs evidence when
you have outright conviction?
— Continued —
NEWS IN BRIEF
LATE AUGUST
Feature | Tourism
In 2010, a solution finally appeared
in the form of the infamous Eyjafjal-
lajökull eruption, which stalled air
traffic all over Europe and made Ice-
land a household name in the process.
The government’s response to what it
feared would be a fresh PR-disaster
was also perfectly timed and surpris-
ingly clever, with the “Inspired by
Iceland” campaign and its all-singing,
all-dancing promo clip effectively
amplifying and capitalizing upon the
island’s new-found place in the spot-
light.
All of the sudden, interest in Ice-
land-as-tourist-destination was at an
unprecedented high, and tourists and
travellers flocked to the country like
never before.
Clearly, there was money to be
made. An opportunity to be seized.
And indeed, official numbers
show everyone and their grand-
mother spared no time in jumping
the tourism bandwagon. Since 2010,
for instance, the number of registered
tour operators in the country has in-
creased by about 100 per annum, with
776 active operators in the field at the
time of writing.
WOW!
But just who are all these operators
serving? And just how great is the for-
tuitous and unprecedented surge of
tourists we are currently experienc-
ing? For context, look at these num-
bers:
In 1953, Iceland hosted about
6,000 tourists.
In 1985, a total of 97,443 tourists
visited the island.
In 2003, when this very maga-
zine published its first issue mean-
ing to cash in on “the tourism
boom,” an estimated 320,000 peo-
ple dropped by for a chance to
check out that new magazine ev-
eryone was talking about.
For 2014, it is estimated that up-
wards of ONE MILLION TRAV-
ELLERS will make their way to
the island that’s currently home to
327,050 desolate souls.
Since the year 2000, the number of
visitors to Iceland has increased by
8.2% annually; subsequently tourism
has surpassed the fishing industry as
the nation’s largest industry.
TRUTH AND
CONSEQUENCES?
Steps towards enabling Reykjavík
to accommodate the sudden influx
of visitors (and those to come—some
project Iceland will play host to two
million tourists per annum by 2020)
have permanently altered the face of
the city (if not its spirit), with beloved
downtown music venues and shops
making for hotels and puffin shops (if
this is your first time in Iceland, that’s
what we affectionately call the tacky
trinket stores that are overtaking
streets everywhere from Reykjavík
to Reyðarfjörður). Many downtown
property owners have also seized the
(admittedly very lucrative) oppor-
tunity to make a quick buck through
rental portal Airbnb, with scores of
long-term tenants being cleared out of
flats in the much-fetishized 101 Reyk-
javík neighbourhood.
The tourism boom has also brought
suspicions that a Cuban-style double
economy might be taking root in plac-
es, with several reported instances of
establishments doubling their prices
when serving non-Icelandic speakers,
and/or accepting dollars and euros as
payment for a fraction of their worth.
THE REGULATORS
As Iceland’s fragile, not-quite-better-
yet economy grows increasingly de-
pendent on revenues from tourists
and travellers, certain growing pains
are making themselves felt. For those
attempting to make an honest króna,
navigating the regulatory framework
can be a confusing task; certain laws
appear arbitrary and out of context
with existing legislation and/or real-
ity (or both!), and supervisory bod-
ies are lagging behind the fast-paced
growth.
A little over a week ago, Progres-
sive Party MP Karl Garðarsson an-
nounced that he wanted to revisit
the idea of raising VAT on hospital-
ity services, as well as revoking the
tourist industry’s tax exemptions. “I
think it’s normal that they [the tour-
ism industry] pay their fair share, just
like everyone else does,” he said, add-
ing that the state would in turn need
to rethink circumstances and update
legislation and le-
gal framework to
best support and
regulate the indus-
try.
But what sort of
changes in policy
and framework do
relevant authorities
envision?
Ólöf Ýrr At-
ladóttir, the Icelan-
dic Tourist Board’s
director, says her
organisation relea-
sed a five-part rec-
ommendation this
May for the Min-
istry of Industries
and Innovation, whe-
re they listed out
several thorough
recommendations
for improving ex-
isting laws. These
recommendations,
she says, are meant
to increase coop-
eration between the state and tourist
operators, streamline and simplify
legislation, and address concerns
from all parties involved.
Hopefully, someone from the leg-
islative branch will eventually find
time to take a gander at those recom-
mendations.
But, what about nature?
It’s not just tour operators receiving
flak as the industry expands. Among
other popular targets of criticism
are reckless travellers who veer off
marked paths and casually destruc-
tive motorists that indulge in off-road
driving, damaging the island’s sensi-
tive flora and fauna.
Andrés Arnalds, an official from
the Soil Conservation Service of Ice-
land, says that off-roading is becom-
ing a major problem nation-wide, and
that further preventative measures
are necessary. Just this August, land
near Löðmundarvatn lake was con-
siderably damaged by off-roaders.
Kristín Linda Árnadóttir, the
general director of Iceland’s Envi-
ronmental Agency, says that her or-
ganisation has been clamping down
on such activities by placing an in-
creased focus on education and infor-
mation dissemination. “We’ve done a
good job of getting car rental compa-
nies to participate,” she says, “but we
are constantly looking into the matter
and attempting to determine whether
there are groups out
there that we aren’t
reaching.”
The agency re-
leased a report this
June with an updat-
ed list of endangered
nature sites. Sur-
prisingly, despite in-
creased foot traf-
fic, the areas listed
as being at greatest
risk—in the “red”
category—have de-
creased recently
from ten in 2010 to
five this year.
Kristín says this
is a trend they’ve
been noticing for
the past few years.
“We compile these
reports to help us
determine where to
prioritise our efforts
and funds,” she says,
“we are, af-
ter all, manag-
ing 113 protected areas.” Thro-
ugh better footpaths, clearly marked
roads, and improved observation plat-
forms, many areas, such as Gullfoss,
have started recovering.
The landscape is however con-
stantly shifting, and Kristín says her
organisation needs to stay on top of
things. “It was just a few decades ago
that only people driving very power-
ful cars were able to venture into the
highlands,” she says, almost wistfully.
“These days, almost anyone can trav-
el there.”
In the aftermath of 2008’s TOTAL ECONOMIC COL-
LAPSE, scores of Icelanders found themselves struggling
to make ends meet as jobs became scarce and household
debt skyrocketed. The nation collectively struggled to come
up with ways to pull itself up by the bootstraps; the gov-
ernment assembled expert panels while enthusiastic citi-
zen groups established think tanks (and faltering tycoons
founded predatory instant loan businesses), all trying to de-
termine: where can we score some cash?
Growing
Pains
As Iceland’s budding tourism industry
grows mature, we ponder some of the
challenges it faces, and wonder how it
can best rise above...
Words by Tómas Gabríel Benjamin & Haukur S. Magnússon
Illustration by Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
The tourism boom has
also brought suspicions
that a Cuban-style dou-
ble economy might be
taking root in places,
with several reported
instances of establish-
ments doubling their
prices when serving
non-Icelandic speak-
ers, and/or accepting
dollars and euros as
payment for a fraction
of their worth.