Do’s and Don’ts for tourists in Icelandic communities
Do’s and Don’ts for tourists in Icelandic communities
Based on the success of previous local tourism guidelines, seven Icelandic communities are now launching new Community Specific Guidelines to greet visitors. The launch coincides with the re-opening of the cruise season in Iceland.
In March and April, AECO helped facilitate several Community Specific Guideline Workshops in western, northern, and south-eastern Iceland. Altogether five workshops were held and organized by the local communities in Akranes, Húsavík, Djúpivogur, Hrísey, and Grímsey. The purpose of the workshops was to put tourism on the agenda and develop community guidelines with specific recommendations, information, and advice for visitors.
The first and until now only Icelandic Community Specific Guideline was developed by the community of Seyðisfjörður in 2019. Aðalheiður Borgþórsdóttir, Mayor of Seyðisfjörður in 2019 has a clear message about the guidelines: “With cruise calls increasing rapidly, people in town were getting anxious so we thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting with them and create the guidelines, which was a success. The guidelines are helping us to educate the guests who are coming to Seyðisfjörður”
Community Specific Guidelines is a tourism management tool developed in 2017 by Cruise Iceland, Visit Greenland, Visit Svalbard, The Northern Norway Tourist Board and AECO funded by NORA. As a part of the development of general Community Specific Guidelines, a template was also developed – the first of which was first successfully introduced in Svalbard in 2018. After this the development of Community Specific guidelines gained speed so that altogether 12 Community Specific Guidelines were developed in 2018 and 2019.
Advice on how to be a considerate guest
To welcome visitors, Community Specific Guidelines provide a set of helpful instructions before arriving in each location. They offer tips and tricks to get around and advice on how to be a considerate guest. Among other things, the guidelines encourage visitors to enjoy the town and landscape, but to leave native flora, animals, and cultural heritage untouched. Tourists are given useful advice on to ask before taking photos of locals, to avoid disturbing people’s privacy. The guidelines also give advice on sites worth visiting – including areas suited for hiking.
Elías Bj. Gíslason, Director of Quality and Development in the Icelandic tourist board - is very happy with the collaboration with AECO and welcomes visitors to Iceland:
„The most important thing in tourism, as in life itself, is trust. Trust between the locals, the visitors, and the business operators. It is therefore important that the local communities create certain guidelines for visitors and tour operators that are well presented to them. It is gratifying to see the emphasis and effort that AECO puts on creating different types of guidelines for their members to build up a trust between themselves, the visitors, and the communities they operate within. Due to this, the Icelandic Tourist Board cooperated with AECO in creating community specific guidelines in this NORA project that was funded by Nordic Council of Ministers. “
Local ownership is key
All the new Icelandic guidelines were created by the local communities with assistance from and based on a template by the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators (AECO).
Ilja Leo Lang, AECO’s Community Engagement Project Manager, who has been involved with the guideline creation in this project says that «local initiative and work in the guideline creation process has been a key factor for success. It has been amazing to witness the level of engagement from the locals. If I have learned one thing from participating in the many community workshops it is the importance of getting people together to discuss tourism, what to and not to do locally – and seeing how such meetings creates better understanding, more involvement, and local ownership. »
Gyða Guðmundsdóttir, Community Engagement Specialist of AECO with a special focus on Iceland, says that the expedition cruise industry is working to foster good relations with local communities.
“We are very happy for the good dialogue and collaboration between the local communities and the expedition cruise industry. It’s great to see that more Icelandic communities have embraced this tool. That way, we make sure that expedition cruise ships are welcomed now, and in the future.
AECO has implemented many guidelines, standards, and tools to ensure environmentally friendly, safe and considerate expedition cruise tourism in Iceland. This also includes vessel tracking, field staff assessments, observer schemes, in addition to developing Community Specific Guidelines for locations in Svalbard, Greenland, Canada and Norway. It is great to see more Icelandic communities embraced this tool and made it their own.
One important thing to stress is that all of the communities that have developed new Community Specific Guidelines have decided that these are not only for cruise guests – but for all visitors to these communities”
All Community Specific Guidelines and other guidelines are available on the AECO webpages and in West Iceland: Akranes Community Guidelines