Executive summary
Cruise tourism is an important part of tourism in Greenland and in the years to come, it is expected to grow. In Nuuk the future of cruise tourism is subject to a great deal of debate. Many local stakeholders want to build the cruise industry and develop it in a more sustainable direction but face a range of challenges in this work. This case report has been developed as a part of the research project Sustainable Arctic Cruise Communities, which has researched sustainable cruise tourism development initiatives across five Nordic Arctic cruise ports. The study is based on desk research, document analysis, interviews and field research. The report discusses and synthesises the key issues in Nuuk. The hope is to draw insights from this destination to inform the development of more sustainable Arctic cruise communities in the future.
The report shows that Nuuk is in many ways an atypical Arctic cruise destination, and its size and position as Greenland’s capital means that it does not suffer from many of the severe problems faced by small communities that are overwhelmed by large numbers of cruise tourists. Nonetheless, as our analysis makes clear, there are still challenges related to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of cruise tourism, and an ongoing lively debate about its future development.
The report identifies three key issues related to cruise tourism. First, the common use of resources and shares spaces that create negative impacts, such as pollution, but also positive impacts; for example, developing tourist infrastructure that can be used outside the main season. Second, the timing and pace of cruise tourism are important for economic and social sustainability. This includes issues related to seasonality, long-term planning combined with unpredictability due to weather conditions, and the dynamics of short, intense cruise calls that last only a few hours. Third, different stakeholders attach different values and meanings to various types of cruise tourism, which means that there is currently no consensus regarding the future development path of cruise tourism.
Overall, most stakeholders in Nuuk agree that they do not want mass cruise tourism and very large ships, but there is no clear consensus regarding exactly which cruise segment is preferred – beyond a desire to target tourists that are higher-spending. Most stakeholders believed that cruise tourism should be better regulated but few had very concrete ideas about how this should take place, or who has a responsibility and a mandate to lead on this issue.
As argued during a cruise seminar in 2021, no one knows who has ‘the red button’ to push stop and our study also shows that no single institution has the authority, mandate or incentive to stop cruise. No single actor in Nuuk is currently able to ‘push the red button’. While stopping cruise tourism may not be an option, more transparency and closer collaboration and dialogue among industry stakeholders and representatives of the community will be needed to ensure that cruise tourism takes better part in the economic, environmental and socially sustainable development of Nuuk.