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Lakeside Excursions

  • Published on June 29, 2016
Lakeside Excursions is a small company, arranging excursions on Faeroe Islands' largest lake, Sørvagsvatn, also called Leitisvatn. Lakeside Excursions is situated in Vatnsoyrar, a small village in the middle of the Faroese island of Vagar. It is the only village in the archipelago that is not on the seacoast. Lakeside Excursions aims to give their customers a unique experience on the lake on sustainable terms, in a manner not disturbing the nature, running with a silent motor, and telling the customers about the nature and sustainability. The landscape, nature and wildlife is almost unspoiled by man, making the importance of protecting this place high priority.
Lakeside Excursions wishes to be an example of sustainable tourism on the Faroe Islands. Customers are given a nature experience and information on sustainability. The goal is to let customers enjoy nature sustainably and to understand its value - both to locals and to tourists as well as its value as nature itself. The Owner Ólavur Poulsen became interested in environmental protection and sustainability while educating himself in Iceland. Gradually nature and sustainability became a large part of his life and led him to start his own sustainable nature tourism business. In the Faroe Islands, nature conservation regulation is limited. Therefore, any sustainability aspects of tourism and nature activities are to a large degree dependent on the organisers. Lakeside Excursions started with arranging tours on the lake to visit the waterfall, a site that is also popular with the locals. Due to financial constraints, Ólavur Poulsen had to be innovative in accessing a suitable boat for his tourism activities. He built his boat by combining second-hand materials, using an old catamaran acquired from a salmon farmer as the base, constructing the cabin on the deck from a small greenhouse, a bus stop shelter, and a caravan. The chairs on board are from an airplane. A new engine was bought for the boat to be both more silent and pollute less. In order to improve the quality of the excursions, Lakeside Excursions has been part of a Nordic project called RENSEA since spring 2012. RENSEA is a project creating a regenerative hybrid-electric propulsion system, with the objective to develop a silent and non-polluting engine for nature adventure boats. Ólavur Poulsen hopes to have a chance to promote the project on Faroe Islands with the help of the bigger partners in the project. Ólavur Poulsen has also taken part in development projects. In 2013-2014, he took part in a project lead by the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, about Slow Adventure. In the project, he envisioned how slow, sustainable adventure tourism could be a part of Faroe Islands' tourism and how such activities could benefit from being marketed as such. Success Factors Ólavur Poulsen feels that the reason for his success is his responsible behaviour, which makes his customers feel safe, and his enthusiasm, respect for the environment and sustainability principles. He measures his success from the number of tours booked and passengers on them, and by his financial result. Sustainability Impacts Ólavur Poulsen wishes to provide his customers with an experience of the beautiful pristine nature of the Faroe Islands and telling them about sustainability. Ólavur Poulsen has not measured his impact, but he has received generally positive feedback from his customers, who thank him for being made aware of the nature, wildlife and sustainability. Ólavur Poulsen has also been on the national radio and is active in social media. Lakeside Excursions has about 1000-1500 customers annually. There is no registration of sustainable nature tourism enterprises in the Faroe Islands, but the number of enterprises claiming to be sustainable nature tourism businesses or similar is growing. It is estimated that there are approximately 5-10 nature tourism enterprises in the Faroe Islands. Ólavur Poulsen‘s sustainability principles include minimising the noise and pollution created by his boat excursions by keeping the speed very low, at 4-6 knots. This way his excursions disturb the wildlife and neighbouring residents as little as possible. Simultaneously, the fuel consumption of his boat is very low. Challenges and potential for further development The greatest challenge in the beginning was to have a boat big enough and suitable for the excursions. The tourism has been growing slowly in Faroe Islands, so also the income and possibilities to invest are small. Luckily, this means that tourism is not straining the nature too much. Serving sustainable food on the excursions is one goal for the future. When he has the possibility to make the investment, Ólavur Poulsen aims to use the electric propulsion system created by the RENSEA project on a new 48-passenger vessel with an electric motor. This would increase the overall sustainability of his business, as 60 % of the electricity produced on the Faroe Island is Green energy. By 2030, Faroe Islands aims to achieve 100 % Green energy production. Contact person for more information: Ólavur Poulsen, lakeside@lakeside.fo

External source(s)

Project start date
01/01/2005
Project end date
01/01/2005

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