Last updated 7 October 2024

Marine and coastal tourism in Svalbard has historically had a substantial increase, and the development since 1996 is well documented. The activities may have negative effects on the environment and cultural heritage, caused by – among other things – noise, pollution, and disturbances/damage to animals, plants, habitats and cultural sites and monuments.

Cruise ship in Kongsfjorden. Photo:Geir Wing Gabrielsen / Norwegian Polar Institute

What is being monitored?


Reported numbers from marine and coastal tourism concerning people going ashore and landing sites beyond the settlements and Isfjorden

The time series indicates the development of marine and coastal tourism activities in Svalbard during the last 30 years, not including the settlements and Isfjorden, with numbers derived from the tour operators’ annual reports to the Governor of Svalbard. The number of people going ashore from cruise ships and smaller tourist vessels has risen from about 24.000 persons in 1996 to about 87.000 in 2023. Low numbers in 2020 and 2021 were due to the coronavirus situation. However, numbers from 2022 and 2023 show that the activities rapidly got back to normal after the pandemic.
(Cite these data: The Governor of Svalbard (2024). Number of people going ashore from cruise ships and smaller tourist vessels, the settlements and Isfjorden not included. Environmental monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen (MOSJ). URL: https://mosj.no/en/indikator/influence/traffic/cruise-and-coastal-tourism/)


The time series indicates the development of geographic distribution and dispersion of marine and coastal tourism during the recent 30 years, not including the settlements and Isfjorden, with numbers derived from the tour operators’ annual reports to the Governor of Svalbard. The number of landing sites where people embark from cruise ships and smaller vessels has increased from less than 100 in 1996-1999, to usually more than 200 a year in recent years. Low numbers in 2020 and 2021 were due to the coronavirus situation. However, numbers from 2022 and 2023 show that the activities rapidly got back to normal after the pandemic.
(Cite these data: The Governor of Svalbard (2024). Number of disembarkation sites from cruise ships and smaller tourist vessels, the settlements and Isfjorden not included. Environmental monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen (MOSJ). URL: https://mosj.no/en/indikator/influence/traffic/cruise-and-coastal-tourism/)

Details on these data

Last updated7 October 2024
Update intervalYearly
Next updateMarch 2025
Commissioning organizationNorwegian Polar Institute
Governor of Svalbard
Executive organizationGovernor of Svalbard
Contact personsThomas Haavik

Method

After every marine and coastal tourism season since 1996, commercial tour operators have reported to the Governor of Svalbard. Up to the year 2000 only the segment for cruise ships reported their activity, but since 2001 all operators have been included. The main difference concerns daytrips in Isfjorden and its vicinity, that only have been reported since 2001. For each cruise, the operators report the number of crew and passengers going ashore and the sites they landed at. The Governor’s Office will then handle and store the data and calculate the numbers which in turn are reported to MOSJ. The accuracy of the information for reported locations may vary, and hence places situated very close to each other in the same area are sometimes handled as one site. This reduces the accuracy of the number of disembarkation sites.

Quality

The tour operators’ annual reports to the Governor of Svalbard provide a good overview of developments in marine and coastal tourism since 1996. Since 2001, there is a good data basis for all of Svalbard. The data quality has varied in periods because it depends on reports from tour operators, and on internal routines for data management and calculations at the Governor of Svalbard. There are several possible sources of variation and uncertainty in data quality from the time the activity itself takes place until the figures are reported to MOSJ, for example how localities are specified. The current system for reporting, data management and calculation is highly manual and person-dependent.

Data for marine and coastal tourism in MOSJ have been corrected during the monitoring period. In 2013, a calculation error was found in the formula for the dataset, and all figures back in time up to and including 1996 were corrected, in some cases significantly in terms of the number of disembarkations. In 2023/2024, further errors were discovered in the calculations for reported figures to MOSJ. Basic data (which are recorded by the Governor of Svalbard based on annual reports) for the entire monitoring period 1996-2023 were then reviewed by the Norwegian Polar Institute, and the dataset for the indicator in MOSJ was recalculated and corrected (June 2024). After quality assurance and correction of reported figures to MOSJ, the data basis is now considered reliable.

It is particularly important that routines for reporting and data management are systematic and ensure equal and predictable processing of data over time, and that the location indications for place names and coordinates are precise and correct.

Other metadata

Data are reported to and stored by the Governor of Svalbard.

Reference level and action level

There are no reference or action levels.

Status and trend

Marine and coastal tourism has a long history in Svalbard, and the first cruise ships sailed to the archipelago as early as 1891. Before the 1990s, there was little activity and few operators, and most sailed along the west coast or around Spitsbergen. Later, the business grew strongly in both volume and geographical spread, and the development has been well documented since 1996. In recent years, marine and coastal tourism accounts for a significant part of tourism activity in Svalbard, with many passengers, tour operators and vessels, and various types of trips. For trips with a duration of several days, a distinction is made between conventional cruises and expedition cruises, and in addition, day trips in Isfjorden and nearby areas are operated by smaller vessels.

Large overseas ships with a substantial number of passengers offer conventional cruises. All other activities with commercial vessels offering overnight stays, are defined as expedition cruises. These vessels are smaller, and the capacity varies. They are usually based in Longyearbyen throughout the season and carry out trips with disembarkations at various locations around the archipelago. The expedition cruise segment has grown rapidly in recent times and today accounts for a significant part of marine and coastal tourism in Svalbard. The increase in the number of vessels and the length of the trips has led to a spread of traffic to new areas in Svalbard. The number of smaller vessels has also increased, especially for “Ski and sail” trips where the goal is ski touring. “Ski and sail” make use of much smaller vessels and have few passengers, and they go ashore in completely different places than large cruise ships. Day trip boats operating in Isfjorden and nearby areas also offer a popular tourism product in Svalbard. The day trip boats traditionally go between settlements and do not entail large-scale disembarkation in places without established infrastructure.

The number of disembarkation sites outside Isfjorden and the settlements increased from less than 60 sites in 1996 to a preliminary peak of approximately 260 in 2022. Sites beyond Isfjorden and the settlements accounted for over 80 per cent of all disembarkation sites in Svalbard. The increase in the number of disembarkation sites over the past 10-15 years is partly due to the development in expedition cruises with more and smaller vessels, including “Ski and sail”. Since 1996, the total number of people going ashore beyond Isfjorden and the settlements increased from just over 20,000 to approx. 109,000 at its peak in 2019. The annual increase from 2018 to 2019 was particularly large (approx. 60 per cent), which is due to an increase of ships, a longer sailing season and the effect of increased marketing of Svalbard as a tourism destination. Very low figures in 2020 and 2021 are due to the coronavirus pandemic and travel restrictions, but the level picked up quickly after the pandemic. In 2022, the number of passengers was back to almost 90 percent of the previous peak in 2019. The number of sites in 2022 surpassed all previous years since 1996, both beyond and within Isfjorden.

Causal factors

Tourism has long been an important business activity in Svalbard, and especially as a policy instrument in the overall Norwegian Svalbard policy. In White Paper No. 50 (1990–1991) on business measures for Svalbard,  tourism was highlighted as one of three priority areas. This message was further reinforced in  White Paper no. 22 (2008-2009) Svalbard and White paper to the Storting 32 (2015-2016) Svalbard. The current Svalbard policy (White paper to the Storting 26 (2023-2024) Svalbard) indicates that further development of tourism should take place through increased value creation, not growth in volume, and that tourism should be concentrated more to the local communities and the surrounding area of Isfjorden.

The documented increase in marine and coastal tourism in Svalbard over the past 30 years can be attributed to many factors: a targeted and long-term marketing of Svalbard as a tourism destination, increased interest in the Arctic with its unique wilderness character and natural diversity and exciting cultural history, better and more frequent flight connections, more tour operators and tourist vessels, as well as increased accommodation capacity in Longyearbyen.

Since 2003, the total number of tourist vessels in Svalbard normally varied between 21 (in 2005) and 86 (in 2022). The exception is the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-2021, when there were significantly fewer vessels and passengers due to travel restrictions. The trend was towards more and smaller vessels. In the period 2003-2014, there were relatively many large conventional cruise ships in Svalbard, mostly between approx. 20 and 30 different ships each season. The number of large conventional cruise ships decreased significantly after 2014. The development in the expedition cruise segment was the opposite. In the period 2003-2011, there were relatively few vessels, between 17 and 23, and in 2012-2023 the numbers rose to between 24 and 71. Several ships of different sizes were built for Arctic waters up to 2022, and 2022 is the current peak year for the number of expedition vessels in Svalbard. The number of day trip vessels has remained fairly stable at 1-5 since 2004, with the exception of 2019 when eight such vessels operated in Svalbard.

Statistics for boat traffic in the Port of Longyearbyen show that the number of tourist-related calls has increased by 162 percent from 2007 to 2023, from approximately 500 to 1300 calls per year. The number of tourist passengers in the Port of Longyearbyen increased by 183 per cent in the same period, from approximately 32,000 to 90,000 passengers per year. In 2023, conventional cruise ships still had the most passengers among various tourist vessels in the Port of Longyearbyen, but the increase since 2007 of 57 per cent was significantly weaker than for other tourist vessels. The number of passengers on expedition cruises increased the most since 2007, by 815 percent, followed by the number of passengers on day trip vessels, which increased by 285 percent.

For many years, there was little political control with the growth of marine and coastal tourism in Svalbard. The first restriction came in 2007, with a ban on heavy fuel oil and passenger restrictions in the large, protected areas in eastern Svalbard. In 2009, the heavy fuel oil ban was extended to also apply to the three largest national parks in western Spitsbergen. In 2010, traffic bans were introduced at several cultural environments in the northwest and the south of Spitsbergen and on Nordaustlandet. The heavy fuel oil ban was extended to apply to all of Svalbard’s territorial waters from 2022.

Heavy fuel oil bans, passenger restrictions and traffic restrictions have changed the sailing patterns of the largest ships and helped to protect vulnerable areas in Svalbard from conventional cruise tourism, but they have not limited the development of more and smaller vessels. In line with the current Svalbard policy, the Government wants to steer development away from growth in volume, and it has adopted changes to the environmental regulations in Svalbard that will have an impact on marine and coastal tourism. The most significant changes are a ban on disembarkation in large, protected areas except for 43 mapped areas (does not apply in Isfjorden) and passenger restrictions on tourist vessels also in the protected areas in western Svalbard. The regulatory changes will take effect from 1 January 2025, and it is currently uncertain how these will affect the tourism activity.

Consequences

As a result of marine and coastal tourism in Svalbard, a large number of people go ashore in the archipelago. There are often repeated visits from many vessels at the same locations, several times during a season, year after year. Different requirements are placed on the tour operators: they need to be well organised, have sufficient and relevant knowledge, expertise regarding environmental regulations, safety and local conditions, as well as with regard to the natural environment, cultural sites and monuments and heedful travel. Most of the expedition cruise operators in Svalbard are members of AECO (Association of Arctic Expedition Tour Operators) and commit to following the organisation’s guidelines.

Marine and coastal tourism involves travel at sea and on land, and can in certain cases contribute to:

  • Damage to and loss of cultural heritage
  • Noise in water and on land
  • Disturbances/damage to animals, plants, terrain and soil
  • Degradation of important habitats, especially for ice-dependent species
  • Import and spread of alien organisms
  • Litter and pollution, in particular in the event of groundings or shipwrecks

About the monitoring

It is important to monitor the development of the cruise tourism, to detect potential damage to or impacts on the natural or cultural heritage in Svalbard. Hence, MOSJ has selected two time series to present this:

  • Number of persons going ashore from cruise ships and smaller tourist vessels, settlements and Isfjorden not included: indicates the scale of marine and coastal tourism over most of Svalbard.
  • Number of disembarkation sites from cruise ships and smaller tourist vessels,  settlements and Isfjorden not included: indicates geographical spread of activities over most of Svalbard.

An increase in the time series will indicate to the management authorities whether there is a need for more detailed information or action.

The regulatory changes from 2025 limit the number of disembarkation sites in large, protected areas to 43 defined areas, and this will have an impact on the parameter number of disembarkation sites, settlements and Isfjorden not included. It will be all the more important to follow the development of the number of people going ashore in the selected areas, because it is expected that the regulatory changes may lead to increased tourism in these areas. The regulatory changes do not apply to the Isfjorden area, which may affect future development in tourism activities there.

Places and areas

All of Svalbard except Isfjorden and the settlements (Ny-Ålesund, Barentsburg and Pyramiden).

Relations to other monitoring

Monitoring programme

  • None

International environmental agreements

  • None

Voluntary international cooperation

  • None

Related monitoring

  • None

Further reading

Links

Publications

  1. Evenset, A., N Christensen, G. 2011. Environmental impacts of expedition cruise traffic around Svalbard. Akvaplan-niva rapport nr 4823 – 1. Tromsø: Akvaplan-niva AS. 170 pp.
  2. Hagen, D., Eide, N.E., Fangel, K., Flyen, A.C., & Vistad, O.I. (2012). Sårbarhetsvurdering og bruk av lokaliteter på SvalbardNINA Rapport 785. Trondheim/Lillehammer/Oslo: Norsk institutt for naturforskning. 110 pp. https://doi.org/11250/2642884.
  3. Overrein, Ø. (2002). Virkninger av motorferdsel på fauna og vegetasjon. Kunnskapsstatus med relevans for SvalbardRapportserie 115. Norsk Polarinstitutt. 28 pp. https://doi.org/11250/173284.
  4. Overrein, Ø. (ed.) (2010). MOSJ-rapport – FerdselKortrapport no. 015. Norsk Polarinstitutt. 24 pp. https://doi.org/11250/173001.
  5. Vistad, O.I., Eide, N.E., Hagen, D., Erikstad, L., & Landa, A.M. (2008). Miljøeffekter av ferdsel og turisme i Arktis – en litteratur– og forstudie med vekt på SvalbardNINA Rapport 316. 124 pp. https://doi.org/11250/2458892.