Remote islands offer remote-control tourism

The tourist board has created an online experience that lets lockdown web users remotely control a tour guide, moving them through its towns and volcanic islands like a video game character.

Faroe Islands: Tired of staring at your living rooms walls? Itching for that next international trip? The small North Atlantic archipelago of the Faroe Islands may have the answer.

The territory's tourist board has created an online experience that lets lockdown web users remotely control a tour guide, moving them through its towns and volcanic islands like a video game character.

"If you ask them to go left, they go left. If you ask them to jump, they jump. If you ask them to run, they run," explains content and communications manager Levi Hanssen.

Locals strap on a camera-mounted helmet and give a verbal tour as they're remotely guided across the islands.

Tours started on 15 April and will run until at least 25 April. They're broadcast on the tourist board's website, Facebook and Instagram. Hanssen says they had almost 50,000 users on their first four-hour-long tours, they've typically filled up in a matter of seconds.

Each web user gets about a minute of Mario-style tour guide controlling.

Previous tours have visited the territory's second-largest city Klaksvik and a few other picturesque locations. There are plans to go on a kayak tour, a horse ride and even a remote helicopter ride.

The Faroe Islands is an 18-island rocky, volcanic archipelago that's home to 50,000 people of which 20,000 live in Torshavn, the capital.

According to a Johns Hopkins University tally, the territory has had less than 200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and no deaths.

From 20 April, its government will begin easing some restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus, including the re-opening of daycare centres and some school classes.

International tourists have been advised not to travel to the territory until at least 1 May, bringing its tourism industry to a halt.

Hanssen says the project is to ensure tourists will return once the pandemic has passed.

"The idea is to whet people's appetite and get them to want to come and experience this in real life," he says.

(With inputs from AP)