Greenland eyes tourism takeoff with new airport runway

Passengers disembarking at the airport of Nuuk, Greenland, which will soon the capacity for international flights – Copyright AFP Jason Redmond

Camille BAS-WOHLERT

A new runway at Greenland’s Nuuk airport that can accommodate international flights is expected to lift the tourism sector, at the risk of inundating the Arctic island’s infrastructure and fragile ecosystem.

To get to Greenland’s capital, travellers have had to fly from Iceland or by transiting through Kangerlussuaq, a former US military base in the north with the only runway big enough for international flights to land.

The airport in Nuuk will finally have the capacity to welcome bigger planes from November 28.

Another new runway is due to open in Ilulissat, north of Nuuk, in 2026.

“In the past, it was very difficult to travel to Greenland, and the new airports will completely change the infrastructure to get here,” airport spokesman Milan Lund Vraa told AFP.

Home to about a third of the Danish autonomous territory’s 57,000 residents, Nuuk will have to boost its hospitality capacity. 

“There will be so many (tourists) that there will not be enough places for them,” predicted Gideon Lyberth, mayor of the town of Maniitsoq a little north of Nuuk.

He hopes his town will benefit from a rise in visitors coming to admire the island’s pristine fjords, icebergs and untouched wilderness.

The number of tourists travelling to Greenland has increased by nine percent per year in recent years, Lund Vraa said.

But Nuuk will need more hotel rooms by 2027 if the number of tourists grows by five percent per year, according to a recent report.

New restaurants will probably also be needed, with Nuuk currently home to just 15 eateries.

Tourism numbers could grow even more than that, with new upcoming flights from Denmark and North America, including a twice-weekly direct flight from New York to Nuuk.

The new runway “represents an enormous opportunity for travellers keen on adventure and who want to be the first to visit a new and unique destination,” Heather Kelly, director of research at the Adventure Travel Trade Association, told AFP.

– ‘Venice of Greenland’ –

Dubbed the “Venice of Greenland” with coloured houses built on a mountainside overlooking the water, Maniitsoq is home to 2,500 inhabitants.

Hopes are high here for a tourism boom.

“We need it. In my town, there are fewer and fewer people, people are moving to bigger towns with more jobs,” said a sailor named Michael who declined to give his last name.

Locals are cautiously dipping their toes into the tourism business.

“In recent years we’ve seen that young people have started to become tour operators,” said Lyberth, the town’s mayor.

In 2023, the tourism sector brought in 1.9 billion Danish kroner ($278 million), accounting for almost 10 percent of Greenland’s gross domestic product.

A full-scale tourism boom, similar to the one Iceland has had over the past 15 years, will take time.

“All of the infrastructure needs to be in place beforehand, and that’s not something that will happen in a day,” said Taatsi Fleischer, a spokesman for Arctic Circle Business, which supports entrepreneurs in western Greenland.

But do Greenlanders really want a tourism boom?

Feelings are lukewarm towards the massive, heavily-polluting cruise ships increasingly descending on the island, and legislation is being considered to ban them from some areas.

The tourists that pour out of the ships “walk around town … and don’t talk to people” before leaving a few hours later, said the sailor Michael.

He prefers travellers who fly in for longer stays.

– Disappearing landscapes –

Arctic tourism is being affected by climate change.

Skiing, hiking and cruise ships “are directly impacted by the shrinking ice sheet and the associated processes that affect access to sites”, said Emmanuel Salim, a geography lecturer at the University of Toulouse in France.

“In order to develop a destination like this today, you have to think about the image and the reality of a future post-Arctic landscape, in which snow-capped mountains, polar bears and ice floes — which have shaped the image of these places — no longer exist.” 

Locals are aware of the need to develop tourism slowly.

“I don’t think Greenland is ready for mass tourism, mostly because of the infrastructure we have,” said Nuuk resident Paaliit Molgaard Rasmussen.

“The hospital is understaffed and the walking paths aren’t maintained,” she said.

Boosting tourism will only work if the local economy is integrated, University of Canterbury professor and tourism expert Michael Hall said.

“If you are going to develop tourism infrastructure it needs to be seen as part of long-term development, with it also being high quality to make it resilient to environmental change,” he said.