Visit Faroe Islands' Latest Viral Campaign Seeks a Tourist-Free Weekend
Skift Take
Visit Faroe Islands is once again attracting outsized attention for a tourism push, but that shouldn't detract from the underlying sentiment. The tiny destination is trying to stave off the pitfalls of overtourism even as it promotes itself on the world stage.
Guðrið Højgaard wasn't sure the idea would work.
Visit Faroe Islands, the tiny destination marketing organization that she leads, was considering a new campaign that would — counterintuitively — urge most tourists not to come to the North Atlantic archipelago, at least for one weekend. Instead, the country is inviting 100 volunteers to come work with residents on local improvement projects on April 26 and 27.
"Imagine if no media thought that this was a fun story, or nobody applied," she said.
She needn't have worried. By Thursday afternoon, just a day after the message went out, the story had received widespread coverage and more than 1,000 applications had poured in.
"There are way too many," Højgaard said, delighted.
Volunteer
