Team Iceland Stopover by Icelandair

Team Iceland Stopover by Icelandair

We’ve featured Icelandair several times in the past for initiatives that seek to persuade transatlantic travellers to use Iceland as more than just a transit point and spend several days in country.

For example, one of the most high profile and creative airline campaigns of 2016 was “Stopover Buddy”, where you could choose an Icelandair member of staff - including the CEO - to show you around Iceland. According to Marketing Week, this one campaign boosted website bookings by 30%.

The latest Stopover campaign ties into the World Cup and the fact that the Icelandic national team has again defied expectations in qualifying for the tournament. The Icelandic team last made headlines in the 2016 European Championships, when it beat one of the giants of European football, England, and reached the Quarter Finals.

Unlike previous Stopover experiences, which lasted 48 hours, each Team Iceland Stopover experience lasts all of 90 minutes.

You apply for one of these experiences on a micro-site, and while they are in theory football themed, they involve much more than just hitting a ball around a pitch.

Upcoming experiences in June include the chance to attend a local Reykjavík match, where you learn to ‘support like an Icelander’, while the “Goal in One” experience on 25 June actually involves hitting nine holes of golf in 90 minutes.

Finally, the airline is giving away ten chances to join the Icelandic team supporters’ club “Tólfan (The twelfth man).”

This group of supporters popularised the so-called “Viking Clap” (or “HÚH!”), which you hear at matches involving the national side, and which video game maker EA has just added into its official FIFA 2018 game. I

n a short video introducing the stopover concept, team captain Aron Gunnarsson explains that a “lot can happen in 90 minutes….so make the most of it.”

In fact, a particularly nice angle is that the different team members actually chose the 90 minute experiences themselves.

For example, the May experiences included a trip to a Geothermal spa, which Icelandair explained as follows:

Birkir Bjarnason knows that downtime and relaxation is a key part of training too. He’s inviting passengers to one of his favourite geothermal areas at Laugarvatn Fontana, where passengers can unwind like a pro, enjoying the geothermal baths, sauna and lake for a swim.

Meanwhile a hiking trip, which combined hiking with fitness training, was developed by International female star Dagný Brynjarsdóttir