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NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) – A new escape route has emerged for anyone looking to circumvent the blockades of the second wave.
Earlier this month, Iceland quietly implemented changes to its remote work visa program for citizens outside the European Schengen Area.
Americans, and any foreign national who does not require a visa to enter Iceland, will be able to stay in the Land of Fire and Ice for six uninterrupted months, even as long as the country’s international borders remain largely closed.
But there is some fine print: you have to have a paid job elsewhere and earn almost six figures.
“I think the idea is to attract high-income professionals from Silicon Valley or San Francisco to spend their money here instead of there,” explains Asta Gudrun Helgadottir, a member of the Pro-Direct Democracy Pirate Party of Iceland and a former parliament. member.
Though extended-stay guests aren’t technically tourists, the hope is that they’ll rent unused Airbnb, fill empty tables at restaurants, and head out into the countryside on weekends to explore the country like slow travelers. Those with deep pockets, too.
Iceland is not the first place to court the working set from anywhere with long-term waivers. Bermuda, Barbados, the Cayman Islands and Estonia have also used the strategy to raise foreign income during the depressed tourism pandemic.
But Iceland’s countryside is unique in that it strictly caters to the wealthy (not that the destination was a cheap option).
Bermuda, for example, requires little more than a US $ 263 (S $ 352) application fee for those who want to trade their drab quarantine life for a temporary island adventure. Iceland requires proof of a monthly salary of 1 million Icelandic crowns (S $ 9,889), or around US $ 88,000 a year, and applicants must meet supplemental health insurance requirements.
The Justice Minister, whose office handles work visas and entry requirements, has released limited information about the new program and the rationale for its approach, and did not respond to a request for comment.
But the locals interviewed believe the goal is to encourage investment without crowds and, more importantly, without straining the national health care system, which can easily be affected, given the country’s population of roughly 357,000.
The country appears to be slowing down a new eruption of Covid-19 cases and has recorded just 5,000 infections and 25 deaths since March.
There is also hope that, with unemployment rampant around the world, the income test will prevent temporary residents from competing with Icelanders for local jobs.
All of this may sound out of place for a country that prides itself on socialist ideals and is sensitive to its own homogeneity; Helgadottir is quick to point out that the new visa regulations are likely to favor upper-class white travelers from the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But this may be the Iceland of the future: less focused on catering to the masses and more than happy to offer luxury tourism to a select few.
In 2018, after a decade of rapid tourism growth, Iceland had 2.3 million visitors, and international arrivals outnumbered the local population by seven to one. No one expected that for much of 2020, the only outbound flights would be fish exports.
That extreme shift from over-tourism to under-tourism – visitor numbers dropped by 79 percent, even after travel within Europe’s Schengen area resumed over the summer – has meant temporary devastation for many local businesses.
But like Venice, Thailand and Amsterdam, three traditionally overcrowded destinations, the downtime has paid off. Iceland will try to preserve them.
Einar Saemundsen, director of Thingvellir National Park, says he has seen the regrowth of delicate mosses and lichens that illuminate the black rock lava fields, and glacial fissures that purify themselves with new infusions of ice water.
The renaissance may stay, he says, if park managers can reduce visitor density. One idea under discussion is to move away from parking passes that allow crowded buses to enter and charge per-person admission fees.
Lower volume hotel projects are also underway in uncrowded areas. The success of Iceland’s first two luxury lodgings, the Heli-ski property managed by Once Experiences Deplar Farm and the Wellness-focused Retreat at Blue Lagoon, where rates start at US $ 2,000 per night, have shown that Five-star developments can thrive, even in a country that is more popular with weekends than with resort junkies.
2020 has already welcomed the Hotel Buubble, with 18 dome-shaped structures scattered in secret and remote locations across the country, some in forests, some along the coast, and some in the Northern Lights domain of the Golden Circle.
Below is a sprawling Six Senses resort, surrounded by a platform of cascading mountains on the island’s southeast coast, in a little-explored corner of Viking country called Ossura Valley.
When it opens in 2022, it will comprise 70 rooms and a handful of private cabins spread over 4,000 acres, generating more horses and wild animals than human footprints. Also, it claims to be carbon neutral. According to Six Senses CEO Neil Jacobs, such sustainable ambitions can be realistic only when it comes to high-end travelers, home buyers and guests staying longer.
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