A new international airport could change Greenland forever

This November, something major is happening in Greenland. The capital city, Nuuk, is getting an international airport that will accommodate jet planes, making direct trans-Atlantic flights possible for the first time ever. Exactly how this will impact the country still remains to be seen, but one thing is almost certain: New air routes will change the country forever.

Currently, there are only two ways to get to Greenland: By cruise ship, or by air via Reykjavik, Iceland, or Copenhagen, Denmark… both of which are time-consuming and expensive. There’s just one city in Greenland with an airport big enough to accommodate flights from Copenhagen, which means residents and travelers have to connect in Kangerlussuaq before making it to their final destination elsewhere in the country.

Last year, Greenland experienced its hottest year of cruise travel ever. About 76,500 people arrived on cruise ships, a 74 percent increase over 2022. But even with air passengers accounted for, the whole country still received only about 130,000 visitors last year, according to the country’s tourism board. By comparison, Iceland is expected to receive over 2 million tourists this year. Allowing bigger planes into Nuuk will make it easier for people to visit, which could dramatically increase the numbers of tourists. But exactly how many flights there will be, how many passengers they’ll bring, and where they’ll come from, is still to be determined.

Stine Selmer, a sustainability consultant who runs adventure trips around Greenland through her company, Selmer Travel, says there are mixed feelings about the potential for increased tourism. She recently moved back to Denmark after over a decade in Greenland and travels there frequently for work. Right now, the country’s 57,000 inhabitants rely mostly on fishing to uphold their economy, and the government wants to diversify. Tourism is a great way to do that, she says, but it simply isn’t possible to support mass tourism there. In other words: Greenland doesn’t want to be the next Iceland. And it can’t be.

“As an industry, we’ve long been working to attract the right tourists because Greenland is a unique destination, with infrastructure, culture, and capacity limits,” she says. “We knew that mass tourism would never work—it wouldn’t work for the locals, and it wouldn’t work for the tourists. It would cannibalize our product.”

“A good place to live would also be a good place to visit. Tourism [should] give back more than takes—that sort of thing.”

- Tanny Por, head of international relations at Visit Greenland

It’s unclear exactly how much tourism could grow in the span of a few years, but Selmer says it would be best for it to grow slowly, and thoughtfully. She said the country wants to put an emphasis on attracting adventure travelers—people coming to hike, go on wildlife tours, or focus on other nature or cultural experiences. Even though it’s much bigger than Iceland, the country doesn’t currently have the capacity—there aren’t enough hotels or tour operators on the ground—to support millions of tourists per year. 

“We want to better the livelihood of people and give them jobs and educate them and bring more money into the society in general, so we get better services and all the things that more money can bring in,” Selmer says. “Everybody wants that, but we also don’t want the way of life to be threatened by tourists, which it can be.” She referenced Venice, which now charges visitor fees, and Japan, where officials recently blocked a view of Mount Fuji because tourists were stopping traffic trying to get photos.

There’s also the elephant in the room: Greenland is made up of an awful lot of frozen ground, and planes aren’t exactly ice-friendly. But the reality is that the country is pretty disconnected from the rest of the world, and its towns are also disconnected from one another. Because of the country’s topography, most towns aren’t connected by roads, so flying is essential. Improving connectivity will make life easier for locals—a welcome change of pace. Aside from the airport in Nuuk, which opens in late November, two new airports are also in the works in Qaqortoq and Ilulissat.

“I think everybody, in Nuuk, at least, is just looking forward to having this airport because it means less wasted time, more direct business, political, and social connections,” says Tanny Por, head of international relations at Visit Greenland. “Everything will be more connected in that way.”

To be clear, Greenland wants you to visit. In summertime, there are incredible hiking trails, long, bright days, and wildlife tours to see reindeer, musk ox, seals, and whales (and polar bears, though spotting them is rare). From September to April, you can take snow, ice, and ski tours. And of course, there are spectacular opportunities to see the Northern Lights. The country has prioritized locally-anchored tourism, using local products and guides wherever possible in a country where almost everything is imported.

But how you visit matters. The tourism board hopes to manage growth by working with tour operators. They want to create new package trips that make it easier for travelers to spread their time across multiple destinations, rather than concentrating all visitors in the same place.

“Instead of three or four nights in Ilulissat, we would say maybe two nights, and then go around the Disko Bay, where there is so much capacity [for visitors] and it’s so untouched,” Por says. “You feel like you’re the only person there, or the only group there.”

Four years ago, the country had a conference called ‘Towards More Tourism,’ Por says. Since then, they’ve reevaluated, and decided to focus more on regenerative tourism.

“A good place to live would also be a good place to visit,” Por says. “Tourism [should] give back more than takes—that sort of thing. The industry came together last year to discuss what it was that we want, where we wanted to head, and we came up with a tourism pledge: Towards Better Tourism.”

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