Tourism is Greenland’s second largest industry, after fishing. The COVID-19 pandemic is particularly devastating for Greenland because, as international tourism arrivals have fallen to zero, domestic tourism is not a sustainable option. The high cost of travelling within Greenland, coupled with the nation’s income inequality, means that the majority of Greenlanders simply cannot afford to holiday in their own country. As a result, it is economically essential that the international tourism industry can return in 2021. As the only form of tourism in Greenland that relies 100% on international tourists, the cruise industry is suffering in particular. In order that cruise ships can return to Greenland and the industry can survive, it is necessary to rebuild a cruise tourism industry that is not only more sustainable but is convincingly responsive to current events. This paper represents the first step towards a more sustainable ‘new normal’ of cruise tourism in Greenland.

Sustainable tourism literature often neglects that sustainability is complex and context-dependent, both spatially and temporally. For the first time, this paper defines sustainable tourist behaviour in the context of Greenland and according to the industry’s stakeholders, with the aim of equipping stakeholders and researchers to make concrete improvements to cruise industry operations. There is a focus on recent contextual changes, and on whether attitudes towards sustainability in tourism are changing to incorporate concerns about health and hygiene.

Empirical data was collected in July 2020 in Sisimiut and Nuuk, two of Greenland’s most popular cruise destinations. In the field, perspectives were gathered from tourism operators, logistics companies, the public sector, and local residents. In order to gather perspectives from cruise tourists themselves at a time when ships were not sailing, the author contacted previous cruise tourists to Greenland through her connections with cruise lines, and conducted interviews via video call. The author gathered 40 semi-structured interviews, most of which were voice recorded, transcribed and then coded and analysed using NVivo. The others were documented through note-taking and were coded and analysed in the same way. The author also gathered 71 survey responses which contribute to the empirical data.

The author finds that it is natural for respondents to both concretise and abstract the notion of sustainability - and this leads to interesting discussions in both directions along the spectrum of abstraction.

On a more abstract level, the author uncovers and discusses various key debates within the discourse of sustainable tourism in Greenland. Among others, the author explores the connection between Greenlandic culture and sustainability, asking to what extent sustainability is an inherent part of Greenlandic culture. Another interesting point of discussion is the notion of economic sustainability in particular, which many stakeholders seem to interpret simply as increased turnover for their business. It is discussed how easily the term ‘economic sustainability’ can be leveraged as a business strategy, and what a more appropriate understanding of this concept might look like.

On a more concrete level, the author uses both the interview and survey data to draw out those more tangible aspects of sustainable tourism which have most importance to her respondents. In this way, the author provides a concrete definition of sustainability in the context of tourism in Greenland, and outlines those sustainable tourist behaviours that should be pursued in the future. In generating this definition, the author pays particular attention to the extent to which current concerns about health and hygiene have influenced priorities about sustainable tourism in the future.

The author argues that perceptions of sustainability are highly context-specific, both spatially and temporally, as a result of the numerous contextual references that are used by respondents in outlining their attitudes towards sustainability. In this way, the paper challenges the ‘buzziness’ of the term ‘sustainability’, by embracing its complexity and fluidity. On a broader theoretical level, the paper makes suggestions on how, as academics, we should continue to conduct research on sustainable tourism, when attitudes towards sustainability are not only context-specific, but also arguably fluid and sensitive to current events.

This paper will constitute the first paper of a PhD thesis which tests behavioural interventions on cruise tourists in Greenland, in order to uncover behavioural strategies that encourage cruise tourists to behave more sustainably. The paper’s results will be used as target behaviours for the experiments, and as benchmarks for their success. The author calls for increased rigour in future studies of sustainability in tourism, emphasising the importance of first defining and justifying the term ‘sustainability’ before using it.

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