Rounding off our 20th season as Norway’s leading outdoor tour operator has led me to share my opinion of what I see as the changing faces in Norwegian Tourism.
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A lot has changed in Norway since we began running trips here in the late 1990s. One of the biggest changes is the growth of tour providers; with the lack of regulations in Norway, anyone can start-up an outdoor operation.
Here is the caveat, Norwegians don’t have a creative bone in their bodies all they can manage to do is a copy. And, by this, they can only copy the shell, or what they see on the surface. The simple fact is that they simply don’t get the underlying intricacies of operating in the outdoors. Therefore, most operators don’t measure up in quality of service, competence, customer value.
And, not only this you have the Tourist Offices in the various regions campaigning you to use these incompetent operators. After running trip from the Lofoten islands to the Western fjords this season I was shocked to see this blatant, unrelentless proclamation for people to use these uncertified, incompetent, operators; the only requirement the Tourist Office uses to advocate for an operator is if they pay them their service fee or not. Buyer beware!
This is especially true in the so-called ‘Lofoten code of Conduct’, here, you are wise to omit the last point in the code as it is simply not true.
