Govern­ment re-opens Spits­ber­gen for crui­se ships

Re-ope­ning Spits­ber­gen for land-based tou­rism is a pro­cess that has alre­a­dy begun. Sin­ce 01 June, visi­tors from main­land Nor­way can tra­vel to Spits­ber­gen again, other Scan­di­na­vi­an count­ries (except Swe­den) will fol­low soon, on 15 June.

At the same time it has, so far, been men­tio­ned that “coas­tal crui­ses” over seve­ral days would take some more time becau­se of their spe­ci­fic chal­lenges. First steps have now been taken to re-open for this kind of tra­vel­ling: accor­ding to a press release by the Nor­we­gi­an minis­try of jus­ti­ce, which is respon­si­ble for Spits­ber­gen, ships may start crui­sing Spits­ber­gen again now under seve­ral con­di­ti­ons. Only ships with a maxi­mum capa­ci­ty of 500 pas­sen­gers are per­mit­ted and they may only use 50 % of their capa­ci­ty. The theo­re­ti­cal maxi­mum num­ber of pas­sen­gers on board is thus limi­t­ed to 250. Only pas­sen­gers from count­ries who­se inha­bi­tants can tra­vel free­ly to Nor­way inclu­ding Spits­ber­gen are allo­wed: this is curr­ent­ly main­land Nor­way and soon also Den­mark, Fin­land and Ice­land.

“Coas­tal crui­ses” in Spits­ber­gen: now pos­si­ble again – under cer­tain con­di­ti­ons.

As all tour ope­ra­tors who are run­ning land-based tou­rism, a hygie­ne and health safe­ty plan needs to be pre­pared and appro­ved by the aut­ho­ri­ties for every ship, based on gene­ral Coro­na safe­ty gui­de­lines which have been pre­pared by Sval­bard Rei­se­liv, a local tou­rism orga­ni­sa­ti­on, tog­e­ther with rele­vant aut­ho­ri­ties. It remains to be seen which ships will be able to meet the requi­re­ments in terms of mini­mum distances etc.

Ships have to be pre­pared to sail direct­ly to Trom­sø in case of a suspec­ted Covid-19 infec­tion on board, rather than to Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Pas­sen­gers from count­ries other than the abo­ve-men­tio­ned Scan­di­na­vi­an ones will need some more pati­ence. The Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment has announ­ced to come with infor­ma­ti­on regar­ding a pos­si­ble re-ope­ning of Spits­ber­gen for citi­zens and resi­dents from “neigh­bou­ring” Euro­pean count­ries until 20 July.

Ship-owners and tour ope­ra­tors will have to see if they can actual­ly ope­ra­te with a maxi­mum capa­ci­ty of 50 %.

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