Iceland is an island (103,000 km2), on the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway, hinging on the Arctic Circle. Since 1944, Iceland has been a republic with a parliamentary democracy. It has a population of approximately 327,000 of which over two-thirds lives in the capital region of Reykjavík on the southwest corner of the island. Iceland has a long history of being a tourist destination but has experienced dramatic growth in visitor numbers in recent years with the effect that tourism is now one of three central pillars of the island’s economy.

A tourism policy has been in place since the mid-1990s but little effort has been put into creating a robust support system for the sector by the central authorities. The recent growth in ...