Icelandic tourist troubles
Apparently, the tourists are starting to be turned off by Iceland's commercial whaling. As the London Times reports, this comes as no surprise to Iceland's whale watching operators:
Dozens have cancelled their holidays in the past fortnight but the real impact is expected to be felt next year.Tourist numbers in Iceland reached record 400,000 this year, 89,000 of whom went whale watching.
Clive Stacey, of Discover the World, one of the biggest operators of tours to Iceland, said that his company organised trips for 7,000 Britons this year, but that in the past fortnight bookings for next year had dropped 25 per cent. The company had expected that bookings would increase by 50-100 per cent.
You have to feel bad for the Icelandic whale watching operators. They opposed Iceland's resumption of whaling from the beginning on sensible economic grounds, and have been largely ignored by their government. Now, as they predicted, it seems the tourism industry is beginning to suffer.
You can help by signing the Icelandic Pledge. The sooner Iceland stops killing whales (both commercially and their so called "scientific" hunt), the sooner Iceland's tourism industry can recover.
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Comments
I think it is too early to tell the impact of this on tourism.
If you look at the graph shown in the newspaper, tourism numbers actually increased despite Iceland announcing it would resume scientific whaling 4 years ago. I don't know why the results will be different now, just because it's commercial whaling not scientific whaling.
Posted by: david@tokyo | November 9, 2006 11:14 PM
This Guy dave@tokyo keeps poping up on bloggs touting the tired old Japanese arguements for commercial whaling. He claims to be Green[yeah right!] & a Kiwi. I think he is in fact one Glen Innes paid by Japanese whaling interests to speak for them in 'proper' english. I wonder if he is related to Tokyo Rose?
Posted by: Dave Head | November 11, 2006 6:01 AM