Paradoxes of cruise tourism to Greenland

This chapter discusses a second major strand of Greenland's tourism development and a third element of tourism's interaction with climate change and 'the ice' is evaluated: cruise tourism. While cruise tourism delivers a significant proportion of all foreign tourists arriving in Greenland, its impacts and dependency dimensions set it apart as a focus of analysis. At the same time, cruise tourism's interaction with elements of climate change, offshore views of glaciers, the blocking of passage by calving icebergs, or the onshore delivery of significant numbers of 'gazers' to Ilulissat Icefjord provides a range of experiences and opportunities that tourism and environmental planners will need to examine carefully along Greenland's path towards independence and greater accessibility with completion of the airport upgrading programme. Therefore, this chapter attempts to evaluate the nature and role of cruise tourism in contributing to Greenland's development and imagery, including the irony of its ships facilitating mass visitor gaze at some of the consequences of Arctic warming to which those very cruise ships may be contributing. Pre-Covid, cruise tourism appeared to have become a significant factor in Greenland's tourism development path, albeit increasingly spatially and temporally concentrated and increasingly developing mass characteristics: all elements contrary to Visit Greenland's development objectives. Greater accessibility to Greenland's tourism centres is achieved through the airports upgrading programme. Two dimensions appear critical: The need to upgrade port infrastructures to permit ships to dock in more locations, and Greenlandic authorities, either individually or collectively, need to fnd ways of strengthening their bargaining positions in relation to decisions taken over the cruise companies' logistics and onshore programmes.