Surge in Chinese tourists drives rise in Antarctica visitors
While the threat of the frozen continent’s ice sheet melting worries scientists, records number of wealthy adventurers scramble to get to the once inaccessible land mass before the party’s over
In January 1966, the first ship carrying “citizen explorers” arrived in Antarctica. At the time, only a handful of leisure travellers had ever considered visiting the world’s most remote land mass.
“I was aware that the idea of setting up tours to that frozen continent would be tangled with complications,” wrote Swedish-American entrepreneur Lars-Eric Lindblad, who led that initial group of 57 onto the ice. “Going there might even be impossible.”
A half-century later, the near-impossible has become merely a challenge. While the threat of its ice sheet melting away occupies climatologists, wealthy travellers are scrambling to get there before the party’s over. The number of people landing on Antarctica is poised to surpass its annual record of 46,000, stimulated in part by new travel options and a surge of Chinese adventurers. On average, about 35,000 to 40,000 people visit each summer, which in Antarctica lasts from November to February. The peak came in the 2007-08 season, before the financial crisis dented Antarctic tourism.
Americans lead the bottom-of-the-world tour trade by a wide measure, with about 12,300 visiting in the 2014-15 season. That’s three times the number of travellers from Australia, who was followed by visitors from China, the United Kingdom, and Germany.