Press

The alternative would be to limit sightseers' access to the country's most popular spots. "The sector and all of us have to be careful not to become victims of our own success," Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir, Iceland's tourism minister, said. A currency plunge and its location for scenes featuring in the popular TV series Game of Thrones helped create a tourism boom, with visitors' numbers growing exponentially - from 490,000 in 2010 to an estimated 2.3 million this year. Tourism is now the country's main export, bringing in a forecast 45 percent of foreign exchange - or $5.1 billion - in 2017. Still, Gylfadottir worries that overcrowding may ruin the experience for visitors and spoil natural treasures. (Columbia Daily Tribune)