Icelandic Tourist Board

The Icelandic Tourist Board and Business Iceland, with support from the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Innovation, have been working on the restoration of VisitIceland.com in recent months. The website was introduced in connection with the Vestnorden travel conference that took place in Reykjanes this week. The site's content has been reorganized considerably, and information to tourists has been greatly improved, with increased material. The collaborative project on renewing the website is for three years, and the opening of the new page is just the beginning of that process. Continuous changes and improvements to the website may be expected in the coming years.

A handbook has been published by the European Tourism Council (ETC) on "Encouraging Sustainable Tourism Practices." The handbook guides and encourages the tourism industry to have sustainability as a guiding principle in its organization and operation. Authorities, policymakers, institutions, municipalities, associations, companies, and tourists have an important role in changing what is needed on the road to sustainable tourism.

Departures of foreign passengers from Iceland via Keflavík Airport were 152,000 in August, according to figures from the Tourist Board and Isavia, or twice as many as in August 2020. The numbers in 2021 are close to those in 2014. About 336 thousand foreign passengers have departed from Iceland in the period January to August, which is around 25% less than last year. Americans were the largest nationality in August or roughly 38%

As presented in the Icelandic news coverage, COVID-19 infections are likely to hurt business operations in the coming weeks and months as COVID-19 spreads through society. We must manage infections in a controlled manner as far as possible until herd immunity is achieved among the nation.