It showed, among other things, that there is generally great overall satisfaction with trips to Greenland. However, we also asked about the things that might have dragged the experience down, in order to give the industry better opportunities to improve tourists’ experiences of Greenland in the future.
Without the opportunity to collect representative interview samples with tourists in Greenland during the two Corona-plagued years of 2020 and 2021, Visit Greenland had to seek cooperation with Greenland Travel to gather knowledge via online questionnaires instead. This was a great success, as a sample of over 6,000 respondents was recruited, approximately half of which had visited Greenland previously. There was a Danish, English and German language version and recruitment took place primarily via subscription lists to Greenland Travel’s and Visit Greenland’s B2C newsletters – but also via facebook.com/visitgreenland and visitgreenland.com.
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It is of course difficult for the tourism industry to do something about this issue directly, but indirectly, tourism development helps to provide jobs, encourage economic growth, and create new exciting future opportunities for young people. Tourism can also help to increase local people’s self-esteem and pride in their country, when they see that tourists are willing to travel such a long way and pay a lot of money to experience their local nature and culture.
In Visit Greenland’s 2021-2024 tourism strategy, sustainability is the overriding principle. The word sustainability can be understood as ‘behaviour and systems that are in balance with themselves and with nature at all times’. Greenland of course faces challenges in regards to becoming a 100% sustainable society, but there are two things in particular that help Greenland along the way. One is the production of electricity through hydropower, which is now up to 70% and is rapidly on its way to 100% – which is the Government’s target for 2030. The second is that there is not yet ‘mass tourism’ in the country, which is a good starting point for creating sustainable tourism development.
Greenland is decidedly an adventure destination, partly because of the lack of everything that characterises ‘mass tourism’ – but especially because of the things that actually characterise the country: the magnificent and sparsely populated nature, the towns and settlements that lie like pearls on a string around the coast, and without road connections between them, and the unique culture. The simple act of traveling to/within Greenland is a bit of an adventure in itself, and one that requires a lot of research to find out how to get around and what you can experience the different places. We must keep in mind that Greenland is still one of the world’s lesser-known destinations – and this can be turned into an advantage. Greenland is perhaps the only destination – if you disregard uninhabited Antarctica – that can justifiably declare itself ‘the last frontier’, which fits perfectly with the brand of a pure adventure destination.
But if we are to succeed in marketing and selling Greenland as an unspoilt adventure destination – now and in the future – the biggest prerequisite is that its nature really is and remains unspoiled.
When asked what negative experiences they had had in Greenland (if any), more than half of previous tourists answered that they had had none. However, for those who had experienced something that diminished their overall impression, the three most important factors were: 1) Mosquitoes 2) Waste in cities and in nature 3) Visible social problems. The controversial theme of visible social problems is included to get a real and unfiltered insight into how tourists experience all aspects of Greenland.
It makes good sense for the tourism industry to try to improve tourists’ experience of Greenland, but there are some improvement measures that are much easier to carry out than others. We can divide the three themes as follows:
| Theme | Possible solution | How easy it is to solve |
| Mosquitoes (and flies) | Inform tourists in advance about what to expect, and how to protect themselves. Sell mosquito spray and nets. | Relatively easy (to reduce problems with mosquitoese – not to solve it 100%) |
| Waste in nature and cities/towns | Clean-ups and avoiding adding more waste | Very easy |
| Visible social problems | Economic growth, better education, etc. | Very difficult |
The mosquito season usually lasts from mid-June to the end of August, but climate changes have meant that the changing of the seasons can vary a lot from year to year. Fortunately, there are effective mosquito repellents, both with and without the toxin DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) – which carries a small risk of causing a rash on the skin, but which is allowed in concentrations of up to 40% in mosquito repellents. You can read Spejder Sport’s mosquito repellent guide here (in Danish). In the guide, you can also read about the types of fabric that protect the most against getting bitten through clothing.
A relatively new product on the market are the so-called ‘insect glasses’ which are non-prescription glasses (also available as sunglasses) on which mosquito nets are mounted. By selling these glasses as a tour operator – or simply referring tourists to the products – you can help tourists to enjoy the spectacular visual nature experiences in Greenland. If they do not want to use mosquito spray on their face, this product present tourists from having their field of vision disturbed by a mosquito net: 
By preparing tourists as fully as possible in regards to where and when they can expect a lot of mosquitoes, and informing them in advance about the precautions that work best (mosquito nets, mosquito repellent and clothes that mosquitoes cannot bite through), they will be better equipped against the mosquitoes. But with these preparations tourists will also tolerate the mosquitoes to a much greater extent, since they have already mentally geared themselves up to deal with them.
Tip: There are almost no mosquitoes around the sheep farms in South Greenland – for as yet unknown reasons.
When we ask during tourist interviews about tourists’ main reason for wanting to visit Greenland, it is – not surprisingly – nature and natural phenomena that are clear number ones. With good reason, tourists expect to encounter overwhelmingly beautiful and ‘unspoiled’ nature. With this in mind, it is no wonder that waste in the towns and in nature causes significant annoyance.
Fortunately, it is very easy to do something about waste in towns and nature (aside from public waste management). More and more nature conservation initiatives have emerged in Greenland in recent years. Every year, CSR Greenland arranges the clean-up day Saligaatsoq in most Greenlandic towns and cities, which you can get involved in both as a company and as an individual. Over the course of one day, the whole town is cleaned up.
Nature’s Superheroes is a project started by the Ministry of Nature and the Environment, which offers climate information and organises clean-up events for school children and volunteers.
The grassroots movement Plastic Not So Fantastic is another example of volunteers fighting waste in nature.
In many of Greenland’s settlements, the waste ends up in an open landfill (called the ‘dump’ in Greenland). It is not very a beautiful sight, to say the least, especially not when storms blow much of it out into the surrounding areas. In the Government’s Waste Action Plan 2020-2031, the goal is to have the open landfills closed down as soon as possible, and instead collect it and send it to the larger towns’ and cities’ waste facilities, where it is either recycled or incinerated.
In Denmark and abroad, there are examples of tourist products in which tourists are invited to collect waste in nature. In Copenhagen, you can borrow a Green Kayak for free, with the expectation that you use it to collect waste from the harbour, and you hear more and more examples of tourists collecting waste at destinations.
It is also just really good style to collect waste that you come across while on trips with tourists, which many boat tour operators already do in Greenland. It’s just about getting started!
