How the Faroe Islands Became an ‘Un-Destination’
Photo Credit: Sunset on west coast of Streymoy island in the Faroe islands. The archipelago is trying to make an impact in terms of tourism. Visit Faroe Islands / Alessio Mesiano
Skift Take
When you are promoting a destination that, for most of the world, seems to be in the middle of nowhere, you have to get creative in your marketing efforts. Recent prize-winning campaigns out of the Faroe Islands prove that when it comes to creativity, size doesn’t matter.
The Faroe Islands received a lot of attention in February when it announced the archipelago was “closing for maintenance.”
The islands, which are a self-governing part of Denmark, offered to host 100 visitors from around the world (airfare not included) for a weekend of clean-up and voluntourism efforts. About 3,500 people applied within days of the announcement.
The idea of the campaign isn’t just putting the area on the map, although there is that, but, Levi Hanssen, content and communications manager for Visit Faroe Islands, said, the aim is “to get people to come and help us preserve what we have. We want to grow sustainably and signal to other places to do the same.”
Closed for Maintenance is just the latest in a series of quirky creative campaigns that the remote Scandinavian destination, where the sheep population far exceeds the human one, has unfurled to the world in the past five years.
And Faroe Islanders (the human ones) are not at all sheepish about t
