Iceland, once a rarely-visited island that always played runner-up to Norway and Sweden, has now grown into one of the most popular countries in the entire world for travelers. But has the country become a victim of its own coolness? Data from the Icelandic tourism board shows that there are officially more tourists than there are residents in the country, and that number is so massive that Americans alone outnumber the Icelanders, and that act of outnumbering will only keep going in the years to come. Here's a sense of how astronomic Iceland's jump has been: in 1996, some 200,000 foreigners visited Iceland; by 2016, that number hit 1.6 million. The actual population of Iceland is about 332,000.
But Americans in particular have become one of Iceland's biggest and most loyal tourism groups, in part because of easy access—Icelandair and Wow Air both offer cheap flights between the U.S. and Reykjavik, and from there on to other destinations in Europe, making it an irresistible deal for Americans with limited vacation time who want more bang for their proverbial buck. With airfares often going as low as $99 one way from cities like Boston, New York, and Baltimore, the deals often felt too good to be true. The cheap airfare-related incentives worked: In 2010, 51,000 people went from the U.S. to Iceland; this year, 325,000. That number will likely be even higher in 2017. Half a dozen new hotels, including the first-ever outpost of Hilton Canopy, have opened in the past six months, and that construction isn't slowing down. So far, Reykjavik locals haven't taken a cue from Venetians, many of whom have demonstrated or put up signs asking that tourists get out of their city. But the government has taken some moves to control and regulate tourism, such as restricting the number of Airbnb listings in the capital.
And the American interest in visiting Iceland doesn't show any sign of slowing down. Reykjavik was the most-Googled city in the world in 2016. Meanwhile, Kayak reports a whopping 65 percent increase in Iceland-related flight and hotel searches from 2015 to 2016, with many people focusing on winter travel and northern lights spotting.
