Iceland is a magnet for tourists. His First Lady has some advice for them.

Eliza Reid, former United Nations Tourism Ambassador and wife of President Gudni Johannesson, welcomes the many visitors to her country and has some suggestions on how to safety, respect and how to meet locals.

In July 2017, Eliza Reid and her husband celebrated their wedding anniversary with a romantic dinner in Reykjavik, Iceland. It was a summer evening, many people had gone out and Mrs. Reid suggested that they go for a walk after their meal. But her husband, Gudni Johannesson, the country's president, was in no mood to face a crowd clamoring for selfies.

"I said: "I don't think it's something you have to worry about," Ms Reid recalled. And she was right: "We went out and, of course, no one recognized him, because they were almost all tourists."

During the two decades since moving to her adopted country, Canadian-born Ms. Reid has seen Icelandic tourism grow from a trickle of a few hundred thousand visitors to a steady flow of more than two million a year before the pandemic. This is a big problem in a country of just under 388,000 people.

The tourism boom — which Ms. Reid said has brought opportunities as well only challenges — is a change she has witnessed and participated in. In 2016, when her husband was elected president, she was the in-flight magazine editor for Icelandair. Three years later, as First Lady, she took on a paid job promoting the country's exports and championing Iceland as a tourist destination. She published a book last year - part travelogue, part memoir, part feminist history of Iceland - and continues to lead the writers' retreat she founded with a colleague.

I sat down with Ms. Reid in the presidential residence, and during our hour-long conversation, she talked about the best way for visitors to meet Icelanders and what she thinks of the term "overtourism".

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tourism has exploded over the past 20 years you have lived in Iceland. What did this transformation look like?

Tourism has given us more access to so much here. You can see it in the number of destinations I can fly to directly from Iceland, the number of restaurants and cafes in Reykjavik. Shops and other places also have longer opening hours than before.

I would also say that the Icelandic population is an itinerant population. They have a real curiosity and a real interest in the outside world, and they are very happy when the outside world is interested in us. You'll see it in the statistics of how Icelanders feel about tourism here, as it's been a huge contributor to our economy and we're very proud of the country.

You mention in your book, "Secrets of the Sprakkar: The Extraordinary Women of Iceland and How They Are Changing the World”, that tourism helped lift Iceland out of the economic crisis of 2008. Can you elaborate?

Yes, there was the economic crisis and also the volcanic eruption. There were two things that on the face of it would be considered very negative, but which actually helped in some ways. I shouldn't imply that anyone was happy that we got through the economic crisis. But the good thing is that all of a sudden Iceland became more affordable.