Northern Lights keep drawing crowds

Tourists from all over the world continue to travel to both Northern Norway and Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard in the hopes of seeing the Northern Lights (Nordlys, or Aurora Borealis). Tromsø also been attracting hundreds of performers lately for its annual Northern Lights festival. Around 400 artists from 14 different countries have been gathering [...]

Ship tunnel plan sails forward

Plans for a huge tunnel for ships at Norway’s stormy West Cape might finally be given the go-ahead this spring. It would be the first such tunnel in the world and could become a major tourist attraction, but critics blast the project as being a fantasy without social merit. If approved, reports newspaper Aftenposten, the [...]

Norwegian Air loses bid for cheaper crews, for now

The Norwegian government has rejected a proposal that would allow Norway’s low-fare carrier Norwegian Air and other airlines to employ Asian residents on Norwegian-registed aircraft and compensate them with Asian-level pay and benefits, which generally are much lower than Norwegian levels. The decision is a blow to Norwegian Air’s plans for low-cost global expansion. Norwegian [...]

Airline soars on global expansion

Bjørn Kjos, the entrepreneurial fighter jet pilot behind high-flying Norwegian Air, has peered into the future and sees global expansion as the key to continuing his airline’s success. Long-haul routes are his next frontier, and he’s ready to fight for the right to run them with “a good product” at low cost no matter what [...]

Another hotel chain dumps big website

Rica Hotels, one of Norway’s largest hotel chains, has become the latest to stop selling its rooms over the large hotel website Expedia/Hotels.com. That means all the large Scandinavian hotel chains have now broken ties with the US-based web giant. Rica Chairman Ole-Jacob Wold confirmed that Rica’s earlier agreement with Hotels.com ran out on December [...]

NRK’s ‘slow TV’ won more viewers

Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made television history with its record-breaking “minute-by-minute” coverage of a coastal voyage on a Hurtigruten vessel two summers ago. It’s since made similar “slow TV” shows, and the latest coverage of a trip on Norway’s northernmost train line was another big hit over the holidays. More than a million Norwegians, or roughly [...]

‘Christmas is the new Easter’

Norwegians are heading for the mountains or traveling elsewhere this Christmas in droves generally only seen during the country’s long, traditional Easter holidays. The reasons are clear: A cluster of official holidays next week, and Norwegians able to afford making the most of them. Norway doesn’t offer the system of “bank holidays” found in many [...]

Cost cuts propel Hurtigruten’s move

Another round of cost-cutting is behind an impending move by Hurtigruten, the coastal passenger and cargo shipping line, to a new, consolidated head office in Tromsø. Hurtigruten will be leaving Narvik after 100 years, affecting the jobs of around 140 employees. Hurtigruten sent a message to the Oslo Stock Exchange late last week saying that [...]

Outlying hotels struggle to survive

It’s winter and low season at many outlying hotels around Norway. Some wonder whether they’ll survive until next summer, but are cheered that an ill-guided government plan to restrict the foreign tour bus operators that bring them guests has been dropped, and now the same government may even offer them new funding as health care [...]

Hotels check out of Internet giant

Several major hotel chains in Norway are cutting their ties with Internet giant Expedia and dropping out of Expedia’s hotel reservation service Hotels.com. Their executives cite “sky-high commissions” and Expedia’s alleged demands that the hotels can’t offer any lower rates themselves on their own websites than what Hotels.com offers. “We can’t live with the commissions [...]

Smaller plates, less waste

Hotels in Norway and Sweden took part last summer in an interesting experiment that produced even more interesting results: Smaller plates provided to guests at the hotels’ traditional breakfast buffets led to a 20 percent reduction in the amount of food that was thrown away, which in turn leads to lower CO2 emissions and lower [...]

Chile calling, ‘to the other end of the world’

A delegation of travel industry officials from Chile did some traveling themselves this week, to Oslo, in the hopes of breaking into what they see as a promising new market. They told local travel agents gathered at the Embassy of Chile Tuesday afternoon that they were more than ready to welcome Norwegians “to the other [...]

Ski resorts able to open early

Lots of fresh snow in the mountains was allowing several of Norway’s major ski resorts to open early for the slalom season this weekend. Some have started cranking up their ski lifts already and hope temperatures stay cold. “This is one of the earliest openings in history,” Trond Østby of the popular winter sports center [...]

Extra Hurtigruten support was illegal

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) has ruled that a transport contract between the Norwegian state and the coastal shipping line Hurtigruten has included illegal state support of the shipping line. An EFTA court upheld an earlier conclusion by EFTA’s Surveillance Authority (ESA) on Monday, and its ruling can’t be appealed. Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that [...]

Thai culture on the Oslo Fjord

As Oslo held its annual “Kulturnatt” (Culture Night) on Friday, with free concerts and entertainment all over town, an entirely different cultural offering was playing out on the Oslo Fjord. It was all organized by an active participant in the local diplomatic community, the Embassy of Thailand in Norway. Thai Ambassador Theerakun Niyom, who’s only [...]

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