Tourism as growth engine

REYKJAVIK – This country doesn’t have its own armed forces. Its cops have no guns. Citizens can own guns, but the weapons are mostly rifles that are used for hunting.

And yet the crime rate in Iceland is one of the lowest in the world. Even when the Icelandic krona shed about half of its value during the 2008 financial crisis that spread across Europe, locals say there was no spike in crimes against property.

In fact, according to Thorleifur Thor Jonsson, senior manager for trade delegations of Promote Iceland, the financial crisis, which brought down their government at the start of 2009, made the country a much cheaper place to visit.

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano (pronounced Eya-fiatla-yugut) in 2010 “put our country on the map,” Iceland Travel guide Sigrun Eiriksdottir told Filipino visitors last Sunday.

The hugely popular “Game of Thrones” series added to Iceland’s appeal, the way “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy drew tourists to New Zealand.

From just 500,000 tourist arrivals in 2010, Iceland saw the number rise to 1.5 million in five years. Last year, tourist arrivals hit 2.3 million. That’s a lot of visitors for a country with a total population of just 350,000 (yes, you read that right).

From its reliance on fishing and aluminum smelting, the Icelandic economy has seen tourism increasingly becoming a major driver of growth. Last year, its gross domestic product grew by 3.6 percent to $17.6 billion. This translated into a GDP per capita of $52,100, making it the fifth most prosperous country in Europe.

Tourism accounted for 10 percent of that growth.

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Today the number of tourists is growing so rapidly that Iceland has had to import workers. Even lawyers are becoming tourist guides or drivers because the industry pays so well. Our guide Sigrun is also a teacher of Spanish.

At our hotel in this Iceland capital, we were greeted by Filipino ushers and waiters in the restaurant. They told us there were 10 Filipinos working in the hotel. Many other Filipinos are working as nurses all over Iceland.

The country is drawing not just Filipino workers but also Pinoy tourists. At our hotel we ran into groups of Filipinos traveling separately – from California, Florida, Hawaii, Canada and Bacolod. There were more Filipinos from California at the Blue Lagoon.

Iceland is showing what tourism can do to an economy. The tourism boom is raising concern that the country is again heading for a bust. But authorities are moving to make their tourism sustainable.

At the Blue Lagoon, whose hot geothermal seawater is truly blue due to the combination of silica and algae reflecting the sky, you need to make a reservation weeks or even months in advance if you want to swim in the pool, because a quota of visitors is strictly observed. Last Monday when we visited, there was a long waiting line near the entrance as we left the pool to have lunch at the adjacent Lava restaurant.

Like Israel’s Dead Sea, the Blue Lagoon is said to be therapeutic and rejuvenating for the skin. My cheeks turned pink for about an hour from the heat and algae mask but the supposed therapeutic effect didn’t go beyond that; the Dead Sea didn’t do much for my skin either. Both destinations, however, are uniquely captivating and should be on anyone’s bucket list. A visit to the Blue Lagoon is worth the grueling roundabout trip from Manila to Reykjavik. 

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Iceland is safe, clean, green, with unique and breathtaking natural beauty. The latest Green Cities Index ranked Reykjavik No. 1, ahead of Auckland in New Zealand, Bratislava in Slovakia, Sweden’s Gothenburg, Sydney in Australia and Czech capital Prague.

Global travelers are increasingly opting for eco-friendly destinations. Boracay may be clean, but this early, there are signs of backsliding on the island.

Tourism needs careful management if it is to be sustainable. Even Iceland has seen the downside of success in tourism. These days it has to remind visitors that it is not safe – or good for the environment – to copy everything that Justin Bieber did in his “I’ll Show You” video. Shot in Iceland in 2015, the video showed the pop superstar running and rolling around in moss-covered lava fields (the moss takes ages to grow), taking a dip in his shorts in sub-polar waters, and singing while perched on dangerous rock formations over steep cliffs.

If we want tourism to be an engine of economic growth in our country, air connectivity also helps. Last Sunday afternoon in Helsinki, Finland, where we had to take a detour on the way here due to a booking problem, I looked at the flight schedule screen and felt a pang of envy. There were three direct flights for the day to Tokyo, one to Nagoya, one each to Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, and one each to Thailand’s Bangkok and Phuket resort. 

There are many other direct flights to Bangkok from other capitals in Europe and other places worldwide. No wonder Thailand drew an eye-watering 35.38 million tourist arrivals last year, up by 8.8 percent. The 35.38 million is said to be equivalent to more than half of the entire Thai population.

In comparison, the Philippines attracted 6.6 million foreign travelers last year – an increase of 11 percent, but still a laggard in the region where tourism competition is stiff.

As always when I travel overseas, I’ve been inviting Icelanders to visit the Philippines. Apart from air connectivity, their common question is whether it is safe to visit.

 What can I say, except the typical answer: which country is safe in this age of the Islamic State?

The truth is that there are countries that are relatively safer than others. People don’t ask questions on their personal security when planning a trip to Iceland. The country is safe, not only from muggers, kidnappers and murderers, but even from snakes, mosquitoes and cockroaches; perhaps the lava rock and geothermal energy plus regular volcanic eruptions drive the critters away. It was a big deal when the invasive bumblebee was first spotted in the country in 1979.

Can the Philippines be clean, green and safe for travelers? We can’t match the levels in Iceland at this point on those areas, but there are ongoing efforts in this direction and they just need to be intensified.