Travel is more than just visiting places
End of June
Hello readers!
Thanks for being here. There are a lot of things I wanted to cover for this edition but I think current events will be stealing the show and setting a sad tone for it. In fact, since school is out, I’m going to take a break from the academic articles and bring them back in September. The summer newsletters, this one and four more, will focus more on current events in tourism or interviews with people in the tourism space. The academic articles and the short little summaries will return but I want to keep it lighter during the summer months.
My apologies in advance if you’re tired of hearing about the Titan. The story is a sad one but I’m focusing on the fact that it is in the tourism realm.
What is submersible tourism anyway? I have a lot of thoughts related to calling the Titan’s tragic and fated voyage “adventure tourism”. I was not following this story closely but the moment I heard about it, I thought, oh, this will not end well. And since Wednesday the 21st I’ve listened to three podcasts about it: The Daily, Front Burner, and Today Explained. One expert who was interviewed called it adventure tourism and it stopped me in my tracks. I guess it is, but it is so out of reach for 99% of the world and it is incredibly risky. The risk involved absolutely does not outweigh the reward (for me). When I think of adventure tourism, I think of some of the things below.
rock climbing, particularly travelling to do so or spending weeks on end travelling a region or country to climb
heli-skiing or travelling the world to ski or snowboard (I’m including all skiing in that)
scuba diving around the world
any kind of trek in the Himalayas, Andes, North American Rockies, I think multiday guided trips are adventure travel too, there are different levels
kayaking or canoeing and camping
travelling the world to surf big waves
cycling or bikepacking through countries/regions/etc.
The list goes on and it is a very broad category and can mean different things for different people, just as the outdoors/outside does. It depends on your location and I don’t want to gatekeep. They’re all activities with some risk and can involve travel but most are not solely for the uber-rich. One can do the things listed above on a variety of budgets based on the location (except for maybe heli-skiing). In that Washington Post article, this quote is what makes me hesitant to call submersible tourism “adventure” tourism.
“…clients who are interested in the extreme side of submersible tourism, like a Titanic dive, don’t see themselves as tourists but rather modern-day explorers.”
Another quote from an expert in that WaPo article:
“The manned submersible for the Titanic expedition would not be coined a tourist submersible by current industry definitions,” he said. “It is an outlier, a very special deep ocean exploration submersible.”
Not a tourist submersible. So yes, these people who lost their lives were explorers. I hope they completely understood the risk, I am sure that the one Frenchman onboard did (Paul-Henri Nargeolet) and took the risk anyway.
This whole story is sad. And, if you listen to The Daily episode, you’ll hear how it is sad for science exploration. There is one more quote within the Washington Post article that hammers the point home that this submersible journey is not adventure tourism but an entirely different experience of exploring regardless of the risks.
“It’s like Mount Everest,” Chiporukha said. If the weather’s bad, “you don’t go up.”
In adventure tourism, your guide or your own knowledge hopefully make the call on whether the risk outweighs the reward. Yes, there are certainly accidents on Everest, among many there is the 1996 example that Krakauer wrote about in Into Thin Air, one of my favourite books. But, as I said, I am not here to make my definition of adventure tourism the only definition.
What are your thoughts? Do you think of submersible journeys as tourism or exploring? Tourism benefits destinations and communities. People are employed in the tourism industry and can support their families. Sustainable tourism seeks to not disturb the environment or at least to lessen the impacts of tourists. Exploring seeks information and to discover. Explorers also may or may not have procedures in place to protect environments to the fullest since they do not know all the details of the delicate ecosystem.
Bigger question: would any of you take a journey on a legitimate submarine or any of the small deep-sea submersibles that global militaries use? I would not.
Links
Rick Steves - if you’ve subscribed to this newsletter, you must know who he is! The two most recent episodes of Unpacked by Afar feature him talking about the impact that travel has on the environment. They are both worth listening to and he always has such thoughtful things to say.
Paris is cleaning the Seine so you can swim in it. Ick. Swimming in lakes, the ocean, and rivers in the country would be fine to me. Swimming in the river of a major city. Not for me.
This is a link from the end of last year mentioning life-changing trips for 2023 but I think it is still relevant. One is glamping in Anarctica. I still have mixed feelings on that. Should there be glamping? I think it is okay to have scientific stations on the continent but I am wary of letting tourists stay overnight. There are a lot of restrictions about materials and fabrics even allowed on shore - this is information we provide to our travellers at my full time job but I actually can’t find any resources on these restrictions, only links to how to layer for Antarctica.
Visting London this summer? The National Portrait Gallery got a refresh and reopened recently after being closed for three years.
Expedition Cruises - An explanation, the impacts, and more. This paragraph stood out to me
In Antarctica, for example, black carbon emitted from cruise ship exhausts is subsequently deposited onto the ice, absorbing heat and increasing snow melt. Marine pollution is another issue; a result of the ship’s grey water and sewage being discharged offshore. The destruction of coral reefs and the erosion of coastal regions through anchoring is also a common problem at regular cruise ship stops.
And this one stood out to me too.
Today, expedition ships can range from basic to luxury. However, the more luxurious the ship, the more difficult it is to maintain a sustainability policy. Consider the importance of luxury when visiting remote regions, especially when most of your time will be spent off the ship. Intrepid Expeditions provides comfortable cabins and an impressively responsible operation that aligns with Intrepid's published climate commitment.
I think that is enough heavy stuff for this edition so I am ending with an adventure in this story, about a man who recently cycled/bikepacked the 7600 km/4700 mi European divide. Anyone want to do some bikepacking or travelling by bike? Planning such a trip is on my radar. I’ve done it with a tour and feel somewhat confident about planning it on my own.
In the next edition, July 15, I will feature the fun and informative chat I had with Jennica Day about vacation and its benefits as well as the return of my recent reads/watches/listens.
Thanks for subscribing and reading!
Sonya