Business Class by Learn Tourism | Episode with Linda Kleist, CEO of Visit Greenland
Picture a visitor stepping off a plane in Nuuk, looking around, and asking where the train station is.
It happens. Linda Kleist, the new CEO of Visit Greenland, has heard it more than once. Her answer is gentle and a little amused: "We don't have any roads between our towns, our settlements, so the way you can go to another destination is either by plane, boat, ferry, or helicopter."
Linda doesn't treat that moment as a punchline. She treats it as feedback. "It also teaches us where we can put more effort into communicating more clearly, or emphasize it more in our branding and marketing," she told me. "So I'm always learning."
That habit of turning every visitor interaction into something to learn from runs through our whole conversation. Linda grew up moving around Greenland and has now been to every destination in the country. She started at Visit Greenland four years ago after a chance conversation at a travel trade show in Nuuk, and she stepped into the CEO role this summer. Here are the ideas from our conversation that stayed with me.
Ask Linda how she'd describe Greenland to someone who hasn't been, and she starts with what people get wrong. "There is a lot of assumptions that it's only ice and snow and winter, but it's not." South Greenland has sheep, lush green nature, and even trees. Head far enough north and you reach the polar night, months when you don't see the sun at all and travel between settlements means crossing sea ice.
Her advice: "If you have time, please visit more destinations than just one."
Something more interesting came up when we talked about pride. On a trip to the Faroe Islands, Linda was struck by how sure the Faroese were of who they are. "They were so confident in who they were, and they were proud of it." She feels the same pride at home in Greenland, but she noticed Greenlanders don't always show it. She came home asking herself a question: "Can we boost that pride in our own communities as well? Because we have so much to share with the world."
Part of the challenge, she explained, is that the remarkable is normal when you live with it. "Going on dog sledding, seeing the northern lights, being around amazing nature and environment. It's our every day. But for some people it's their ultimate adventure experience."
That idea is now part of Visit Greenland's branding: this is our every day, but your adventure. "Please come and feel it," Linda said. "Visit us and feel it and experience it yourself." She says it's working, and locals are starting to see their own daily lives through visitors' eyes.
Try this: Ask five people on your frontline team to list three things about your destination that feel completely ordinary to them. Then ask what a first-time visitor would think of each one. You may find your best stories have been hiding in plain sight.
When I asked how Visit Greenland measures success, Linda didn't open with visitor numbers. "It has been very important that we don't only measure it by the number of visitors to Greenland, because of course it's important. But when we get the social license to operate from the communities, from the locals, then I would say we have quite a good interest for tourism."
She also judges success by how operators behave. Good ones, she said, "don't take it for granted. They do it with respect for the people who live here."
This is destination stewardship in plain language. Arrivals and spending still count. But community support is the foundation that makes those numbers sustainable, and you lose it quickly if you treat it like a given.
Reflect: If your residents graded your destination's tourism strategy tomorrow, what grade would they give it? How would you know?
Linda's advice for anyone starting out in destination development is simple and firm: "Start with the communities. Always start with them, and then work outwards. Because they live there and they also feel the impact of tourism."
She turns that into practical questions. How do residents use the area? What does their everyday life look like? If more visitors come, how will that change things for them?
She also doesn't pretend communities speak with one voice. South Greenland, where she's from, is a major cruise destination, and residents there hold different views on cruise visitors. Other places are more uniformly welcoming. So she makes a point of hearing from everyone: "I usually talk with the locals and the operators and the people working within it to get a holistic point of view from different angles."
The same goes for who she turns to for advice. Her first answer: "the locals, the people. Although some of them are not within tourism, it's very important for me to listen to them as well."
Try this: Look at who you've talked to about tourism in the last month. How many weren't tourism professionals? Before your next planning cycle, set up one conversation with a resident who has no stake in the industry, and mostly listen.
When I asked about positive impacts in Greenland's communities, Linda was careful to say they haven't formally measured it. What she shared instead was what residents tell her. "It has been nice because I've learned a lot about other people, some people I wouldn't have known if they weren't visiting here."
Residents also told her that sharing their stories, whether about how they go hunting or fishing or how they spend time in nature, reminded them how much those stories matter to them too.
She is also seeing young Greenlanders start tourism businesses built around what they already love. One told her they've "always been passionate about being out in nature and fishing," so they built a business sharing that passion with guests who feel the same way. "They're sharing their everyday life with some guests that are also interested in that, so they are making a living out of it."
Linda summed it up: "What kind of value it creates. Doesn't have to be economic. Of course it's important." That includes knowledge, skills, and a longer season. Visit Greenland is working on season expansion so that tourism isn't packed into the summer months.
This is where tourism, done well, is at its best. Visitors leave changed, residents feel more connected to their own heritage, and young people find a way to make a living from what they love without leaving home.
Near the end, I asked Linda what I hadn't asked that I should have. She went back to why she got into tourism. One summer, she saw a lot of visitors arriving who couldn't find any information. "I was like, 'Okay, I can do something about it. I can be part of that change.'" She started studying tourism soon after and has worked in the field ever since.
Her philosophy behind that decision is worth keeping: "It has always been very important that whenever you can, please do."
Linda's whole approach comes back to one idea: the people who live in a destination are the destination. Their everyday lives are the visitor's adventure, their support is the license to operate, and their stories are what visitors take home.
So here's my question for you: What's one thing your community does every day that you've stopped noticing, and how could you help your residents feel proud enough to share it?
Listen to the full conversation with Linda Kleist on Business Class by Learn Tourism: [EPISODE LINK]. Plan your own visit at visitgreenland.com.
Business Class is a podcast by Learn Tourism, featuring conversations with destination and tourism leaders from around the industry. Learn more at learntourism.org.