Almost Two Million Tourists in 2019

mbl.is/Eggert Jóhannesson

Vala Hafstað

Almost two million tourists visited Iceland in 2019 via Keflavík International Airport, or 14.2 percent fewer than the previous year, according to the website of the Iceland Tourist Board. Proportionally, the greatest reduction in tourist numbers from the previous year was in May (23.6 percent) and September (20.7 percent), while the reduction was much smaller during the winter months.

Despite the drop in tourist numbers since 2018, 2019 was the year when the third greatest number of visitors came to Iceland since data on tourist numbers were first collected.

About 71 percent of the tourists who visited Iceland last year came from ten countries. Most of the tourists came from the US, followed by those from the UK, China, Germany and France. Compared to 2018, the number of US visitors decreased the most, or by about a third, followed by those from Canada, whose numbers dropped by 20 percent and tourists from the UK, who were 12 percent fewer last year than in 2018. 

Foreign tourists spent on average 6.6 days in the country in 2019, or about as long a time as the previous year. On average, tourists stayed the longest in August and July (8.4 and 8.0 days, respectively), and the shortest in January and February (4.5 and 5.1 days, respectively). The tourists among the ten largest groups of nationalities who stayed the longest in the country were from Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

A high NPS (Net Promoter Score) indicates how pleased tourists are with their stay. That score was 80 out of 100 in 2019.

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