Starting next week, Greenland will be down to just one Covid-related restriction: foreigners visiting the country must be fully vaccinated. The only other current regulation — that most ships landing there may not have visited anyplace else within two weeks of arrival — will be dropped on 2 March.
That will be welcome news for the passengers of the 370 cruise ships that have announced their arrival in the coming season, which begins in May. For the industry that is there to serve them, it will be greeted even more enthusiastically. Cruise passengers make up half of the 100,000 people who visit Greenland each year, but since the measure was imposed in June of 2020, not a single ship has visited.
Tourism makes up just a small sliver of Greenland’s economy, accounting for 3% of total revenues, so the setback is perhaps more mental than it is economic, but for a country that sees tourism as one of its big-three sources of income and is seeking to increase its share, doing anything to make it harder for people to visit is unpleasant.
So far, 2022 is looking better, but this is after two consecutive years in which the number of visitors was off by 80%, and Visit Greenland, a publicly funded tourism board, does not expect the industry to be back to where it was before the pandemic until 2024.
Cruise-ship passengers 2003-2020
Cruise ship statistics 2019-2020
Expectations of an increase in the number of guests this year are based on the return of the cruise ships. This, in part, was due to the fact that the rule was set to expire on its own in April, and would likely have been allowed to do so, given health authorities’ confidence that there was minimal risk of the country’s health service being overburdened, thanks to a trio of high vaccination rates, declining case numbers and the emergence of the less virulent Omicron strain.
Wednesday’s announcement, however, comes after the industry and opposition lawmakers last week asked for clarification about whether the regulation would indeed be allowed to lapse. Their concern was that unless the rule was dropped now, ships and their passengers would find another place to take their holiday.
Last year and the year before, Greenland’s tourism businesses willing accepted the tougher restrictions for cruises, given that an outbreak aboard a ship, many of which carry more than 1,000 passengers, could result in scores of unknowingly infected people arriving in parts of Greenland that have limited, if any, health services. This year, though, ships have plenty of other places to sail, and health authorities, for their part, recognise that cruise operators are taking steps of their own to keep their, typically older, passengers Covid-free by requiring vaccinations and by having plenty of on-board medical staff. That is a measure of prevention everyone should be able to get on board with.
Kevin McGwin, PolarJournal
Featured image: Heiner Kubny
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