Responsible tourism in Spitsbergen

The frenzy of floating hotels

"Can you imagine? 2,000 people live there and when the cruise liners arrive in summer, over 7,000 people can disembark, wandering around the otherwise quiet streets.” – Lyn Hill, Finance and office manager at Responsible Travel. Read more about her wonderful land based trip to Spitsbergen in a full interview here.

Some people don’t realise that there are alternatives to the giant cruise liners with thousands of passengers that arrive en masse in Spitsbergen for the Midnight Sun. However, we can assure you that there are plenty of smaller ships out there. That said, you don’t get tiny boats sailing or cruising these waters as they need to be equipped to deal with extreme conditions and icy waters. Our responsible tour operators have vessels which sleep 50-200 passengers and adhere to strict environmental and conservation policies. Friends of the Earth carried out research on leading cruise line companies regarding their environmental impacts, and it makes for fairly grim reading. It is also important to note that cruise companies should be working with and following guidelines laid down by the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators (AECO) around Svalbard, so try asking that question to the big players.

But Svalbard is taking important steps to ensure its Arctic waters remain as undisturbed as possible. In 2015 there was a ban on heavy duty fuel oil in Ny-Ålesund and Magdalenefjorden Spitsbergen, meaning that the giant cruise ships which use this fuel have to adhere to very strict routes. According to Responsible Travel’s founder, Justin Francis: "Spitsbergen is one of the most protected and regulated places I've ever seen. Thankfully cruise ships are banned from large parts of the islands. I wish anything like it was true in the rest of the world. Plus, there are only two land areas where tourism is permitted – Area 10. It is a very small part of the archipelago."

When a giant cruise ship docks in Longyearbyen, many residents lock their doors. This is against the norm, as the safety advice is for house and car doors to remain unlocked so that people have somewhere to escape to in the event of a polar bear wandering down the main street. However, the residents lock up because it is not unusual for the cruise passengers to wander into their houses and have a peek, like it is a folk park. Given the huge size of the ships and the tiny size of the town, when the tourists disembark they can double or triple the size of the population within minutes. The chances are, if you are reading this page, you would never dream of doing such a thing, but it is worth remembering that this unique place is home to people too.

There are also specific rules about protecting cultural heritage in Spitsbergen. Interestingly, everything that dates to before 1946 is protected, even if it is an old bottle on the shore, a rusty nail or an old fishing rod. There are also certain traditions such as hunting that upset visitors, but it is important to read up on the history before you go to gain a greater understanding. At Responsible Travel, we don’t support tourists eating whale meat, for example, but we understand that for now it is part of life for local people and that changes don’t happen overnight.