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Icelandic tourism "Collapse"

Posted by (Seattle, WA) on

This is from Bloomberg, via the SF Gate:

"Icelanders in shock as tourism collapse halts economic miracle"
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Icelanders-in-shock-as-tourism-collapse-halts-14031259.php

"The sudden cut in supply caused by Wow Air's bankruptcy, coupled with high prices and a general drop in demand as a result of a global slowdown, mean the latest numbers look dire. Visitors plunged 24 percent in May from the same period last year and the all-important summer season is looking shaky."

I wonder if a lot of those "over-touristed" locales we've been reading about are about to become a lot more empty as the downturn accelerates.

-- Mike Beebe

Posted by
8924 posts

I was in Iceland shortly after WOW went out of business. The airport was amazingly easy to navigate and there were empty stands.

Posted by
9029 posts

There is also the end of Game of Thrones, which has apparently had a major tourism impact on Iceland, Northern Ireland and Dubrovnik.

Posted by
4635 posts

Sounds like a good opportunity to visit.

Posted by
7054 posts

Their incredible tourism year over year growth rates were not sustainable (check out any historical chart, it's truly amazing), so the normal "bust" rebound (if you can call it that) was expected. I personally don't think any country should put all its eggs in the tourism basket (not that Iceland has done that entirely, but it seemed like it was taking it for granted a bit) but to diversify its economy instead. Tourism comes with its own downsides - even in the best of times and especially during major global recessions. This is a country with barely 320k in total population and the number of tourists have been a multiple of that. The free layover business model used by WOW and Iceland Air was/is a deliberate strategy to grow their tourism numbers, so it's no surprise when one of these huge funnels disappeared, the tourism dropped as well.

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