Crisis management and sustainability: lessons from Iceland
Inga Hlín Pálsdóttir served as Director at Promote Iceland for a decade, experiencing several crises among the volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 and the economic collapse of 2008. Inga is currently a destination adviser associated with Future Place Leadership.
Inga will be co-moderating the conference in 2020.
How can the tourism industry, public sector services or economic development activity be carried out when there is a crisis? What to do when things change over night? How to carry on when the problems are sustained over a long time? Iceland has experienced all of this and quite recently. Inga will tell you all about it, having been right in the middle of it all and working with the tourism sector.
An unforgiving environment
Iceland has faced many crises in recent years. Like in many places, COVID-19 left its mark. In 2010, the island’s volcanic eruption brought most of the European and transatlantic flights to a standstill. Interrupting people´s lives worldwide (read about the response here). This brought Iceland in the news, not always for the right reasons. And the ripples of the financial crisis from 2008 were still around.
Inga says that this is not the same crisis as with COVID19 but we will need to re-build our destinations around the world and to do so we need a lot of resilience, adaptability and patience as places and individuals and that is what she will be sharing as well as her focus on sustainability. Some of these insights have been written into a new handbook on Crisis Management in the Tourism Industry.
About the speaker
Inga has been an integral part of branding and promotion for Iceland for over a decade and has been involved with all aspects of the tourism industry. She led the brand of Inspired by Iceland from its start in 2010 and was the Director of Visit Iceland (DMO) at Promote Iceland for a decade. She has also led successful changes for the brand of Iceland as a place and destination, both in crisis and in times of growth. Her main emphasis has been on stakeholder engagement, integrated marketing, sustainability, and responsibility in the industry.
Inga will talk about crisis management in the tourism sector and how to work with responsible, sustainable tourism in the future.