Has Iceland’s love affair with tourists peaked?

A new study of how Icelanders view foreign tourists visiting their country has shown a significant drop in happiness levels over the last twelve months.

“In general, how positively/negatively do you view foreign tourists visiting Iceland?” was the question put to over 900 participants in a recent MMR survey. Just 67.7% expressed some kind of positive response – as compared to 80% this time last year.

Tourist numbers continue to smash records with total numbers in 2016 expected to go well over 1.5 million.

MORE: Tourist numbers in Iceland continue to soar

The replies showed certain geographical and socio-economic dividing lines when it came to how positively people in Iceland viewed foreign tourists visiting the country.

Residents of Greater Reykjavik were significant more happy with their tourists than people elsewhere in the country – 71.7% to 60.3%. This tallies with a survey conducted by Maskína in June this year, which showed that just one in twenty residents in the Greater Reykjavik area view tourists as negative in any way .

There emerges an even greater gap when it comes to personal earnings. Iceland’s highest earners have an 82.8% satisfaction rate regarding foreign tourists visiting the country – this goes down to just 54.7% among the country’s lowest earners.

Iceland’s one-millionth tourist for 2016 is expecting to land at Keflavík International Airport in a week’s time – one month earlier than last year.