The Faroe Islands is an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean with a population of 50.000 people. Like many other beautiful places around the world, tourism had boomed in the Faroe Islands. Over the past few years tourism increased more than 100 % and in 2018 there were twice as many tourists as locals.

Infrastructure like walking trails, signage, fences and waste management were not scaled to fit the increase in tourism and tourism was perceived as a problem by nearly one third of the population.

For Visit Faroe Islands, this created a paradox. Their job was to increase tourism in a country where one third of the population didn’t want more tourists and without the necessary infrastructure.

We didn’t just have one challenge. We had three.

1. Improve the relationship between tourists and locals

2. Improve the infrastructure

3. Increase tourism

And a total budget of less than 300.000$

The Faroe Islands has a remote location, a rough climate and a well-preserved island culture. But perhaps most importantly, the Faroe Islands had a real need for help.

Luckily, not all tourists just want to tan and drink Margaritas. We saw many indicators that travelers have a growing appetite for authentic, cultural travel experiences and “doing good”. For example, 84% of millennials said that they would travel abroad to participate in volunteer activities. Lonely Planet range Eco-tourism as a top three travel trend and many of the tourists in the Faroe Islands expressed a desire to get to know the locals better and in a more direct way.

We decided to make a bold strategic move: From tourism to voluntourism.

How could we catch the world’s attention with a media budget of 0 $?

We decided to close the country.

On the 20th of February 2019 the Faroese Prime Minister announced that on the last weekend of April, the Faroe Islands would be ‘Closed for Maintenance, but open for voluntourists’.

This meant the closing of all the major tourist sites. Instead, voluntourists were invited to help maintain and care for the Islands. In return, they were gifted accommodation and food over the three-day maintenance period by the Faroese nation.

Throughout the weekend volunteers and locals should collaborate on ten projects building walking trails, fences and viewpoints, and set up waste bins and signage.

We knew, we were taking a risk. Were people willing to pay for their own flights and come and work for free?

We launched the initiative with an official video announcement from the Faroese Prime Minister. On one hand it was important to have a dramatic message while at the same time not to scare future tourists away. Therefore, the film became a fine balance between the dramatic message of the islands’ closing and breathtakingly beautiful shots of the Faroe Islands.

We pitched the story directly to the ten most influential medias in the world and invited them to come and participate.

We invited journalists to come and work side by side with the other volunteers, and we sent out live coverage and interviews to all media who had mentioned the first press release.

Within 24 hours from the announcement of ‘Closed for Maintenance, Open for Voluntourism’ the story made headlines all over the world. It resulted in more than 600 news articles with a total online readership of 6,000,000,000 and 50,000,000 social media interactions.

Within just 4 days, 3,500 people, equivalent to seven times the number of people that normally visit the Faroe Islands on the weekend, had signed up.

On the last weekend of April, volunteers from 25 countries arrived to help maintain the islands. Today the top ten sights have all been improved. Simply by turning tourism into voluntourism.

‘Closed for Maintenance’ proved not only to be a frontrunner solution to a global issue, but also for the Faroese people, who improved their view on tourism by 25 %. And it became the beginning of a reoccurring Faroese event.