Foreign Tour Operators Give Iceland High Score

According to a new online poll, conducted in January, foreign tour operators and travel agents are increasingly positive toward the Icelandic travel industry and Iceland as a destination, Morgunblaðið reports. This was announced on the website of Business Iceland (islandsstofa.is).  Such a poll is conducted twice a year.  The participants are foreign tour operators and travel agents who sell trips to Iceland.

The poll measures the so-called net promoter score (NPS), that is, the percentage of customers rating their likelihood to recommend visiting the country to a friend or colleague as 9 or 10, minus the percentage rating this at 6 or below, on a scale from 0 to 10.

Iceland’s NPS now measures 65 points – the highest ever. Factors such as safety, the government’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s popularity as a destination, and the country’s sustainability efforts all contribute to the positive results. The value of the Icelandic króna and the supply of flights to Iceland, or lack thereof, are factors that are the likeliest to have a negative impact on people’s attitudes.

“The results of the poll are promising for the recovery of the [tourism] industry once the pandemic is behind us,” states Sigríður Dögg Guðmundsdóttir, program director of travel services for Business Iceland. “We do, however, have to be realistic, and expectations for reservations at the beginning of the year are considerably lower than we’ve seen in earlier polls…Clearly, we must be patient. Still, it is interesting to see that the majority of participants in the poll believe reservations for trips to Iceland will pick up already the first half of the year and become about as many next year as they were before borders closed.”

The poll suggests that market areas near us, that is, the Nordic countries, Central and South Europe and the UK will be the first to rebound.

The poll was sent by email to about 5,400 representatives of foreign travel agencies. Altogether, 521 of them participated in the poll, 396 of whom completed it.