Sustainable Destination

From 2016 to 2019 Visit Svalbard was a proud holder of Innovation Norway’s label as a Sustainable Destination. The label scheme has been an important tool for Visit Svalbard, the local businesses, and the destination at large in working seriously towards sustainability and improving sustainability in the local tourism industry in Svalbard day by day, and year by year.

Attaining the label is a demanding job, requiring resources both in terms of labour and funds. This also goes for the re-labelling process, which was planned to be undertaken in 2019. Unfortunately Visit Svalbard was not able to procure the funding required to initiate this process before the deadline for re-labelling had passed, and the following Covid-19 situation has led to additional challenges. As such, Visit Svalbard is as of 2020 withdrawn from the label scheme, but we’re continuing to work towards gathering the necessary funding. Our ambition is that we’ll be re-labelled over the course of 2021, and that we’ll once more be a part of the important cooperation towards sustainability that the label symbolises.

Visit Svalbard encourages work on environmental certification of companies in our destination as one of the main focus areas in our sustainable policy. In addition to Visit Svalbard itself, the companies listed below are certified.