When President Trump revived his desire to acquire Greenland for the United States early in his second term, it initially came as a boon to Casper Frank Moller and his co-founders at Raw Arctic. The three Greenlanders had begun their adventure tour company in mid-2024 and discovered that it benefited from the global focus on their home territory: Curious travelers flocked to book tours. The demand was so great that the men had to buy additional boats and hire more workers to meet the demand for their fly-fishing trips and whale safaris.
This year, with Mr. Trump threatening to acquire the island, is different.
“Last year, there was a lot of talk, but it came with a positive side effect of putting Greenland on the map as a destination,” Mr. Moller said. Now, Greenland is associated with “the potential disturbance of the current world order,” he said. “We’re getting a lot of questions about whether it’s a safe travel destination.”
New Airports, More Tourists
Tourism in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, has been rising steadily for years. The increase is a result of several factors: Greenland’s efforts to diversify its economy, melting ice that has opened once-inaccessible ports to cruise ships and a fascination with the Arctic in popular culture. In 2025, 44 percent of Greenland’s tourism businesses reported an increase in high-season bookings over the previous year, according to a recently published survey from the tourism board. The board concluded that, with some improvements in infrastructure, the 2026 season could be “significantly better” yet.
Those expectations are fueled, in part, by major investments in Greenland’s connections to the rest of the world. Late in 2024, a new airport in Nuuk began allowing international flights. The following summer, United Airlines used it for the first direct flights from the United States to Greenland since a short-lived effort from Air Greenland ended in 2008.
The Nuuk airport has attracted a wider range of visitors and increased revenues. “We used to have mainly Danish or Scandinavian tourists, and now they come from all over the world,” Avaaraq Olsen, the municipality’s mayor, said. “Even the really small businesses, like the artists who make small souvenirs by carving bones, they told me that they sell so much more now than they ever have before.”
Two new airports are scheduled to open this year: a domestic one in the southern town of Qaqortoq and an international one in Ilulissat, 350 miles north of Nuuk. Ilulissat is already considered Greenland’s most popular tourist destination thanks to the icebergs that dot its beautiful harbor, and a significant increase in visitors is expected once the airport opens. Some even predicted double the roughly 50,000 who came last year.
But that was before the American president made Greenland a geopolitical focus. Now, Greenlanders are wondering if the instability will curb tourism or if the attention will increase it.
“We have a lot of eyes on Greenland right now,” Christian Keldsen, director of the Greenland Business Association, said. Although there are no figures yet, Mr. Keldsen said he had heard from operators that fearful travelers were canceling their trips.
But he added, “We’ve also had people say, ‘We want to go see Greenland before it becomes American.’”
Is a Slowdown a Bad Thing?
So far, the greatest impact seems to be a reduction in reservations rather than cancellations. One Dutch travel agency, Aurora Reizen, reported a drop of between 20 and 30 percent in bookings to the island. Arctic Yeti, a Spanish company that usually brings 200 adventure travelers a year, has also noticed a decrease.
Mr. Moller of Raw Arctic said he was seeing caution in some of his customers. “We’re on a bit of a tipping point where we feel some of our guests have become hesitant to move forward,” Mr. Moller said. “We haven’t had any cancellations, but people are definitely delaying booking.”
He said he hoped that Mr. Trump’s recent statements in Davos, Switzerland, in which he rejected previous threats of military action and tariffs, would calm the situation.
But for some, a slowdown may not be an entirely bad thing. As interest in the island has grown, Greenland has grappled with how it might prevent the overtourism that has plagued other destinations.
When he was mayor of Ilulissat, Palle Jerimiassen supported the new airport as a way to draw tourism and bring in new revenue. Since leaving office, he has started his own tour company, Ilulissat Event. But he said he was worried that Ilulissat could not handle all the predicted arrivals unless it figured out a way to spread them more evenly throughout the year. “What we sell up here is silence and being a part of nature,” he said. “That will be impossible if we get too many tourists. So if this gives us a little more time to make our plans for the future, that’s OK.”
Ms. Olsen, Nuuk’s mayor, echoed those concerns. “It’s very important for us to not make the same mistakes other cities around the world have made,” she said. “So we decided that whatever we do with developing tourism, we do for the inhabitants first.” That’s why, she said, even though the city is short on hotel beds — something painfully obvious to the hordes of journalists who have swooped in over the past two weeks — Nuuk’s government is moving slowly and deliberately in licensing new building projects. “We want to make sure that local citizens benefit from them,” she said.
Are those citizens still going to welcome Americans? “As long as you don’t show up in a MAGA hat,” Ms. Olsen said. “The people of Greenland are very aware that not every American supports Trump and his administration.”
That’s what David Madeo is counting on. A lawyer in Los Angeles, he plans to visit Greenland, Denmark and the Faroe Islands in August and has no intention of changing that. He is not concerned about anti-American sentiment and is looking forward to learning firsthand how Greenlanders feel about the political situation.
“Honestly,” he added, “the U.S. is so divided and tense right now, I welcome the opportunity to hang out with Danes and Greenlanders for a bit.”
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