Life.Culture.Discovery.

Cash cows or white elephants? Only time will tell with these ambitious tourism projects

Elephant hunting in Botswana and Indonesia’s ‘10 new Balis’ scheme are both designed to attract additional visitors

However, will these initiatives could turn out to be good news for the destinations they’re supposed to serve?

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A hiker on Mount Kilimanjaro. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:00pm, 19 Feb 2020Updated: 8:41pm, 19 Feb 2020

Tourism initiatives and infrastructure projects can turn out to be strokes of genius, or costly white elephants. Some of the unlikeliest brainwaves have been huge hits: who could have guessed that dressing people up in radiation suits and sending them off to explore Chernobyl would prove such a success? Or that opening up Tuol Sleng, the Cambodian secondary school used by the Khmer Rouge regime as a torture and execution centre, would draw tourists in their hundreds of thousands?

Only time will tell if the following ideas and enterprises were inspired decisions or poor judgment.

Mount Kilimanjaro cable car

Plans to build a cable car on Mount Kilimanjaro encountered opposition almost as soon as they were revealed last year. With fewer people ascending on foot, guides and porters fear huge job losses, with a knock-on effect for families and village communities. There are also concerns about increasing numbers of tourists posing a threat to Kilimanjaro’s fragile ecosystem.

Some climbers believe that being able to summit the world’s highest free-standing mountain in minutes will detract from the sense of achievement that comes from spending a week hiking through dense rainforest, moorland, alpine desert and arctic ice cap. In response, the Tanzanian Tourism Ministry points out that it would enable less physically fit and older visitors to enjoy the soaring views. They also note that cable cars are a popular means of transport at other sightseeing destinations, such as South Africa’s Table Mountain and China’s Great Wall.

Pakistani soldiers on the Siachen Glacier. Photo: Getty Images

Siachen Glacier opens to tourists

Scene of a long-running military conflict between India and Pakistan, the Siachen Glacier region, in the Karakoram Range of the Himalayas, opened to tourists recently. Currently subject to a ceasefire agreement, the world’s highest battlefield (5,400 metres) has seen the deaths of at least 2,700 troops, usually due to harsh weather, crevasse falls and altitude sickness rather than as a result of combat. (In 2012, 140 soldiers of Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry perished after being buried in an avalanche.)