45.600 Foreign Visitors in July

Departures of foreign passengers from Iceland via Keflavik airport were about 45 thousand in July, according to figures from the Icelandic Tourist Board, or less than 80 percent compared to the numbers in July 2019, when departures were 231 thousand. 

Since the beginning of the year, 387 thousand foreign passengers have departed from Iceland via Keflavík Airport, which is a decrease of 65,8% compared to the same period last year but then the total departures were 1,1 million. 

Huge decline in foreign visits

It is hardly necessary to say much about the reasons for the decline in the number of foreign visitors to the country in recent months, but ever since the effects of the Covid epidemic began to be felt, there has been a collapse in the number of departures, as can be seen from the table below. Thus, the year-on-year contraction was 53% in March, 99% in April and May, 97% in June and 80% in July.

Tourists by nationalities in July

Of each individual nation, most departures in July were due to Danes, but their departures were almost 10,000 or 32.7% more than in July last year. In second place were Germans with about 9,000 departures, more than half as many as in July last year. In total, the departures of Danes and Germans were 41% of departures of foreign passengers in July.

This was followed by the departures of Poles (21.8%), Swiss (6.9%), French (6.5%), Norwegians (5.1%), Dutch (4.6%), British (3.1 %), Belgium (2.6%) and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (2.2%).

Icelanders' travels abroad

About 13,300 Icelanders went abroad in July this year or 77.9% less than in July 2019. Since the beginning of the year (January-July), about 108 thousand Icelanders have gone abroad, which is 259 thousand fewer departures than in the same period last year.

Further Information

Further division between nations can be seen in the table below.

Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash