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Extreme tourism: ‘If it was safe, that’s not an adventure’

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Tom Robbins , Simon Usborne and Oliver Barnes

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Tomaž Rotar knows a thing or two about life and death in extreme environments. In February 2021, the Slovenian oral surgeon was sitting inside a cramped tent 7,300m up K2, the world’s second highest mountain. More than 20 climbers had gathered in the dark on the snowbound ledge, arriving at the camp in worsening winds and temperatures that were already below -30C. 

To stand a chance of reaching the summit as the weather window they had been chasing began to close, they would have to set off again almost immediately.

Most of the climbers there that night did the sane thing; they sat tight and descended at dawn, many swallowing the fact that they had paid guiding companies at least £20,000 for a chance to reach the summit in winter, a feat that had been achieved for the first time only weeks earlier. Others felt moved to step back into the darkness and attempt what they had flown halfway around the world to do.

Rotar was among seven climbers who made the decision to go on. He only turned back hours later when he came across an unexpected crevasse. Three other climbers managed to get across it, and continued. When they failed to return, a frantic search gripped the world’s media as military helicopters and even a fighter jet scoured K2.

All three men died that night. It would be months before their frozen bodies could be found. As Rotar has followed news updates about the Titan submersible this week with a familiar feeling of dread, he has been reflecting on the calculations wealthy adventurers make when they face that vital decision: do we stay, or do we go?

“It’s the same kind of people who feel the same kind of draw, whether it’s to go deep under the sea, or to climb very high, or to run very far,” he says. “It’s a kind of sickness, like a venom in your veins that makes you want to go. Because you want that beautiful feeling that comes when the danger is over and you know you have achieved something. And then you don’t even know how you lived before that, so you go back and you do it again.”

At the extreme and often prohibitively costly end of the travel industry, a niche has grown to meet demand for variations on that same feeling. From the oceans, to the mountains, to polar ice sheets, to active volcanoes — and now the vast expanse of space — people are increasingly prepared to pay small fortunes in pursuit of big, sometimes dangerous dreams.

Even the South Pole — which, after Scott’s ill-fated visit in 1912, went unvisited by humans until 1956 — is now offered in tourist brochures. The US Amundsen-Scott South Pole station is shadowed by another facility, about half a mile away: a tourist camp that welcomes visitors with a sign announcing “the world’s southernmost resort”. Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions, which runs the camp, offers a range of ways to get there, including the “South Pole Overnight” trip at $65,000 — guests simply fly there and back (and are presented with a certificate on their return).

Two figures seen in the distance walk across a snowy expanse

Interest in visiting Antarctica — the world’s coldest, highest, windiest continent — is surging, with the large majority of people arriving via cruise ships and landing in small boats. The number coming ashore doubled from 26,000 in the 2014/15 austral summer season to reach 55,000 in 2019/20. (Data from the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators also records some of the activities they undertook: the most recent season saw tourists go stand-up paddleboarding 598 times, snorkelling 1,661 times, snowboarding 766 times and making 4,217 dives in submersibles.)

As with other areas of the “extreme tourism” world, tour operators are increasingly blurring the lines between holidays and expeditions. As well as fly-in trips to the South Pole, ALE offers a range of itineraries that casual observers would assume were the preserve of professional explorers. Want to ski from the edge of the continent to the Pole, a 60-day epic, battling temperatures down to -30C? Just head to the ALE website and, if you can manage the $85,000 price tag, click the “book now” button. The trip will be led by an experienced guide (though it’s up to you whether you mention that in your press release and Insta-posts).

Particularly popular is the “ski the last degree” expedition, where guests are dropped by plane 69 miles from the Pole (one degree of latitude), then trek there on skis over about five days, giving those on a tight schedule the flavour of a classic polar crossing. According to IAATO, numbers taking part in the $75,000 trip tripled in the three years to 2019; those interested can head off on December 7 or 14, or January 4 next year.

“We push our clients as far as they want to go, from abseiling to zip lining to getting a taste of what it’s like being a polar explorer,” says Patrick Woodhead, a record-breaking Antarctic adventurer and founder of the luxury Antarctic operator White Desert.

Starting in 2005 with three tents and two clients, White Desert now runs three camps, each for 12 guests, offering cocktails and chef-prepared meals, a yoga pod, sauna and library. Transport options include a Gulfstream private jet (a service that Hamish Harding, one of the five people who died on the Titan submersible, was involved in setting up); clients typically pay around $100,000 per visit. “I think that this kind of travel is exactly what people are looking for,” says Woodhead. “When people come to Antarctica, they are disconnected from their phones . . . they’re in an otherworldly situation and environment and that very much changes people.”

Though tourism is growing more normal in Antarctica, risks remain. The US Coast Guard is currently carrying out an investigation after four cruise-ship tourists were killed in three incidents at the end of 2022. Two died after an inflatable boat capsized, one when a “rogue wave” hit the ship, and another fell and hit his head in rough waters.

Yet one of the odd things about extreme tourism is that risk seems to attract rather than deter customers. Just two days after a volcano erupted on White Island off New Zealand in 2019, killing 22 people, a boat guide in Whakatāne, the town closest to the volcano, told reporters that he had begun receiving new inquiries from tourists who wanted to go there. One woman wanted to see White Island close up “to feel the fury”.

A woman looks out of an aircraft at smoke rising into the air from an island

“It’s the same kind of thing that the Romantic poets talk about when they talk about the sublime in nature, the spectacles that take us out of ourselves and transcend the day-to-day human experience,” says Amy Donovan, a geographer and volcanologist at Cambridge university who has watched demand grow ever higher for proximity to spewing ash and lava. When Fagradalsfjall erupted in Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula in March 2021, more than 350,000 people flocked to the site over the following 10 months.

After two people died in the Clipper Round The World yacht race in 2015/16, applications increased. When the celebrated US extreme skier Doug Coombs was killed in 2006 in an accident in La Grave, France, an event reported at the time as “like Superman dying”, guides noticed an uptick in inquiries from American tourists wanting to ski there.

Disaster also sells in the Himalayas. The deadly 2021 winter season on K2 — which claimed the lives of two climbers in falls, as well as the three who were lost near the summit — only increased demand for attempts on a mountain that is far more dangerous than Everest. Last summer, about 200 people reached the summit of K2, more than triple the previous record.

“People want to climb Everest because it’s dangerous and involves risk,” says Lukas Furtenbach, an Austrian mountain guide specialising in premium expeditions to Mount Everest (his packages cost up to $217,000, including personalised, professional-level video and photography). “If nobody died and it was 100 per cent safe, that’s not an adventure and I think demand would decrease.”

This year’s Everest season saw a record number of climbers — and a record number of deaths, 17. Furtenbach, whose clients all safely reached the summit, is increasingly concerned about what is happening when money, ego and the human urge to seek thrills collide in dangerous places. “I would say 14 of these deaths could have been avoided with very simple safety protocols,” he says. “Four of them were clients who went missing on summit day. Other people ran out of oxygen. These things should be impossible, and it’s happening because operators are not regulated.”

Not all extreme travel involves physical exertion. Woodhead, the White Desert founder, is this weekend in Equatorial Guinea, speaking at the inaugural “Most Traveled People” conference. The event caters to “competitive travellers”, a rapidly expanding group who attempt to visit as many places as possible on Earth, logging their visits online to climb up the league tables. Having decided the 193-long list of UN-recognised countries was too easy to complete, enthusiasts have divided the world further — MTP’s list now runs to 1,500 countries, regions, territories, dependencies, island groups and so on. (Currently top of the leaderboard is Harry Mitsidis, 51, who has reached 1,362 of them).

MTP is not alone. Since 2009, the Extreme Traveler International Congress has run meetups for tourists wanting to go beyond the brochures. Venues have included Baghdad, Mogadishu and Rockall, a granite islet in the north Atlantic.

“I think there’s a growing awareness that it’s possible to get to these kind of places,” says James Willcox, whose company Untamed Borders offers trips to destinations including Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen and has organised events for ETIC. “Previously, if a destination wasn’t in the Thomas Cook brochure and there wasn’t a Lonely Planet guidebook, people just had zero information. Now it is fairly easy to find out about anywhere online, and social media has this normalising effect — once you start looking, you see that other people are going, however unlikely the destination.”

Virgin Galactic is due to launch its first commercial space flight next week. Already 800 people have bought tickets, which now cost $450,000

The drive to tick boxes and complete defined challenges runs through much extreme travel. As reaching the “seven summits” (the highest mountain on each continent) has become common, adventurers have strived for the “explorer’s grand slam” (the seven summits plus North and South Pole), or even the “explorer’s extreme trifecta” (the highest and lowest places on Earth, Everest and Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, as well as space). A new generation is now rushing to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks, often using extensive helicopter support to do so. Critics have pointed out that the approach creates a small number of “honeypot” objectives, while ignoring less well-trodden paths.

The wider phenomenon of buying adventure has long precedents, says Leo Houlding , a professional climber with a string of groundbreaking expeditions to his name. “Since the beginning of exploration, wealthy people have patronised and paid to join expeditions,” he says. “In the so-called golden age of European alpinism, the peaks were being climbed by rich Britons using hired local guides — some were probably good climbers, others were probably paying to go so they could dine out on it.” Nevertheless, the trend has “exploded” in the past decade, he says.

A space capsule carried by parachutes floats down to an empty flat landscape

Space offers the lure of a new frontier. Virgin Galactic is due to launch its first commercial space flight next week — a two-hour experience that will reach about 55 miles above the Earth’s surface. Already 800 people have bought tickets, which now cost $450,000. Meanwhile, the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin rocket reaches 62 miles in a flight of just 11 minutes; since its first crewed flight in 2021, passengers have included the Star Trek actor William Shatner, the undersea explorer Victor Vescovo and Hamish Harding.

A more leisurely option is Space Perspective, an eight-person capsule that will be carried to about 19 miles (the stratosphere, rather than space) beneath a balloon. Guests are promised “No rockets. No g-force” but rather a gentle “meticulously crafted” six-hour flight “complete with a meal and cocktails”. The company hopes to launch late next year, tickets are already on sale at $125,000 per head.

Many of the operators are developing tourism and commercial space travel in tandem, and extreme travel increasingly cleaves close to science and conservation. Whereas White Desert’s Woodhead started his company by hitching a lift on a Russian cargo plane taking scientists to Antarctica, he says his planes now deliver about 250 scientists to the continent each year, the same number as his high-paying tourists. Original Travel is currently offering a £52,000-per-person trip to Botswana in which tourists will help with the release of a dozen relocated rhinos.

Jimmy Carroll of tour operator Pelorus recently organised a trip for a wealthy family that involved chartering a yacht with an on-board helicopter to Antarctica. At the client’s request, Carroll organised the charter of a second yacht, with a second helicopter, to accommodate a team of research scientists who would also teach the client’s 12-year-old daughter.

Pelorus offers access to submersibles too, of the sort that have become de rigueur aboard expedition superyachts — the increasingly in-demand vessels designed to access the harshest seas without sacrificing comfort. Some of Carroll’s clients recently chartered U Boat Navigator, a 24m yacht which sleeps six and is equipped with two submersibles. Both are built by Triton, whose underwater vehicles, which cost up to $40mn, have been used to film the BBC Blue Planet series. The Florida company was given a boost last year when it welcomed two new investors: the billionaire American hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and James Cameron, the Titanic movie director and submariner.

“People are intrigued by the fact that 70 per cent of the world is covered by water and we have seen very little of it,” Carroll says. “And I think the likes of David Attenborough ’s programmes have definitely helped spark imaginations.”

Four smiling astronauts seated in a space capsule

Perhaps the most extreme tourist of all splashed back down to Earth last month after an eight-day visit to the International Space Station. John Shoffner, 67, former chief executive of the fibre-optic cable company Dura-Line, was one of three astronauts who had bought places on Axiom’s second trip to space; the company hasn’t said how much they paid but previously reported ticket prices of $55mn. Like many adventurers, Shoffner has form across multiple disciplines: he takes part in 24-hour car races at Germany’s Nürburgring, skydives and BASE-jumps and has raced across America by bike without support.

Why does he do these things? “Well, they’re fun,” he says . “They help you find your edge — I would say your limit, but you don’t really want to find the limit.”

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Risking death at the ends of the earth costs us all / From Chris Hunter, Farnham, Surrey, UK

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  • Even After the ‘Titan’ Submarine Disaster, Demand for Extreme Travel Has Never Been Higher

The tragedy threatened to derail one of the tourism industry's fastest growing sectors. Instead, experts say demand has never been higher.

Sharael kolberg, sharael kolberg's most recent stories.

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Scaling the highest peaks, diving to the depths of the ocean, taking a flight to space—these trips are not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, so-called “extreme tourism” is booming.

“During the pandemic, people were sitting at home, examining their lives, which created a pent-up demand for making travel a priority,” says Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) President Shannon Stowell. “Now, adventure travel is exploding. The concept of small group travel in remote locations is way more appealing, compared to visiting over-touristed locations.”

Scuba divers encounter with large Oceanic Blacktip Shark , Aliwal Shoal, South Africa

“It hit the core for so many people, in terms of fascination and anxiety about the risks that people are willing to take to experience something so extreme, “says Matt Berna, Intrepid Travel president for the Americas. “We were hoping for the best result, which didn’t come. Innately, that’s going to ripple through our industry. It has shed light on the fact that there’s a lot that goes into running a qualified, highly safe, inspected and reputable trip.”

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Remarkably, mere months on, experts says that the OceanGate disaster hasn’t put off travelers who were already eager to push their limits—especially wealthy travelers who have the means and time to accumulate unique experiences that come with bragging rights.

In 2021, the global adventure tourism market was valued at $282.1 billion, according to a report by Grand View Research. It’s now projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.2 percent from 2022 to 2030, with the hard adventure segment representing a significant revenue share of more than 20 percent. This is credited to a gradual increase in the number of travelers that are willing to take high-risk activities and are open to adventures.

“A little bit of risk is good because it makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something,” says Massimo Prioreschi, president and CEO of Mt. Sobek, an adventure tour operator offering trips such as polar region adventure cruises. He says he’s personally seen an uptick in year-over-year bookings. “But the more extreme the activity, the higher the chance of death. It’s good to know what you’re getting into—and the tour company should qualify you, as well.”

Nepal, Solo Khumbu, Everest, Sagamartha National Park, Roped team ascending, wearing oxygen masks

Tim Tuiqali, guest experiences manager at VOMO, adds that “no line has been drawn between adventure sports and the Titan implosion.”

“It hasn’t affected our business,” he says. “We are actually seeing a steady increase in interest. At a luxury level, we understand that safety is paramount. Our guests put a lot of trust in us. We’ve been offering the shark dives for more than 15 years and haven’t had any incidents.”

Lifelong explorer Milbry Polk, co-author of “Women of Discovery,” emphasizes that travelers need to choose companies that have very good track records.

Others even argue that would be adventurers should not be put off by the Titan catastrophe. While OceanGate did blur the lines between scientific expedition and tourist attraction for the uber-wealthy, the research being generated was genuine and in the true spirit of exploration. Their goal was to research the ecosystem of the deep North Atlantic Ocean, and to gain a better understanding of how and why some communities of organisms develop in geographic isolation, while others range broadly across the ocean floor.

In the Wall Street Journal , Explorer’s Club President Richard Garriott de Cayeux wrote, “Harding and Nargeolet [Titan crew members[ were individuals who relentlessly pushed boundaries for the betterment of science. Critics may label their expedition as ‘extreme tourism,’ and perhaps it was, but it was their spirit of exploration that propelled them to seek, experience and learn…we will not stop exploring.”

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Inside the World’s Rarest Experiences: Why the Rich Love Extreme Tourism

O n June 18, 2023, the submersible Titan lost contact with the outside world as it approached the wreckage of the Titanic 13,000 feet below sea level at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Among the five people on board were ultra-rich extreme tourists who paid $250,000 each to cram into the makeshift sub and descend into the abyss.

Four days later, on June 22, an international search was called off when officials determined that Titan had imploded, killing all aboard.

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The next day, on June 23, Business Insider reported that it was unlikely that the tragedy would deter the world’s wealthy elite from paying top dollar to risk their lives for the sake of so-called “extreme tourism” — high-end, hardcore adventure travel that requires money most people will never have for experiences that most people would never want.

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The lifting of pandemic-era restrictions triggered an avalanche of cash into the extreme tourism realm as the rich lined up to part with small fortunes to experience the last remaining (mostly) unseen, untouched corners of the world and beyond.

Grand View Research reports that the extreme tourism industry was worth $322 billion in 2022 but is on pace to top $1 trillion in 2030.

Much of the enthusiasm comes from COVID itself.

Like everyone else, the rich watched helplessly as friends and loved ones died from humdrum daily tasks like trips to the grocery store or visits to the doctor’s office. Gone forever, their fortunes unspent, many rich survivors vowed to live their lives to the fullest, even if it killed them.

“More and more wealthy travelers are diving into extreme tourism because they understand how fleeting life can be,” said Frank Spitzer, CEO at Pelecanus , a luxury travel operator that specializes in upscale vacation packages in Colombia. “This mindset of embracing life’s unpredictability is pushing them to seek out thrilling adventures and extravagant getaways before change is ahead. Also, they can easily afford these extravagant expeditions, so why not?”

So, what, exactly, are these ‘extravagant expeditions’ and how much do they cost?

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The Titanic wreckage sits roughly 2.5 miles below the surface of the ocean. That’s just a short stroll compared to the journey that space tourists take when they travel up and away from Earth’s oceans to a different kind of abyss.

Axiom Space is a privately funded space infrastructure corporation that flies missions to the International Space Station and its own Axiom Station. It offers so-called “private astronauts” the chance to visit space and view their home planet from the emptiness of the final frontier. 

The company states, “Missions with Axiom include 17 weeks of expert training at space agency facilities that only a privileged few get to see. Training prepares the participant as an astronaut, develops a deep camaraderie with fellow astronauts and truly inaugurates one as a member of the exclusive space traveler family.”

Understandably, none of that comes cheap. Axiom Space doesn’t disclose the per-person cost of its private astronaut program, but Space.com estimates each seat sells for roughly $55 million.

Jet-Setting, Redefined

Some people would rather see the world than float above it — and they might not have eight figures to plunk down even if they did. For them, extreme tourism involves cramming as many experiences in as short a time with as much luxury as humanly possible.

Companies like Abercrombie & Kent organize mind-boggling global private jet tours like Around the World with Geoffrey Kent. It costs $185,000 per person — but think of what you get for the money.

The excursion takes place over 26 days, and in less than a month, the rich will receive insider access to local spots that regular tourists can’t visit in Japan, India, Malta, Senegal, Saint Helena, Uruguay, Easter Island and French Polynesia.

Their tour bus is a chartered Boeing 747 with full lie-down first-class seating, a dedicated staff and a chef. Wherever the passengers go, a valet, concierge, guide and luggage handler follow.

They probably won’t risk their lives, but they will experience the most extreme and expensive globe-trotting that money can buy.

Pursuing Extreme Animals and Environments

Another mainstay of extreme tourism is, naturally, the pursuit of the extreme — extreme wildlife, extreme environments, extreme weather, etc.

For example, Abercrombie & Kent — just one of several ultra-luxe extreme travel providers — offers the following packages that allow the rich to pursue the planet’s wildest side in style:

  • North Pole Expedition Cruise: From $47,995 per person
  • Arctic Cruise Adventure — In Search of Polar Bears: From $20,495 per person
  • Kenya and Tanzania Wildlife Safari: From $11,995 per person
  • Climb Kilimanjaro — Summiting the Machame Route: From $8,495 per person
  • The Great Migration Safari in Style: From $19,795
  • Galapagos Wildlife Adventure: From $11,495 per person
  • Patagonia, the Last Wilderness: From $11,495 per person

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : Inside the World’s Rarest Experiences: Why the Rich Love Extreme Tourism

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Alex Christian

The Wild World of Extreme Tourism for Billionaires

Three climbers walking up snowy mountain with the Mount Everest peak in the background

It was less than an hour off the coast of Greenland that Jules Mountain began to question his sanity. The British entrepreneur was completing the second leg of his eight-day attempt to become the first person to fly a Bell 505 light helicopter across the Atlantic. “I had to go over freezing fog at 14,500 feet or ice would build up on the vehicle’s blades,” he says. “It was -14 degrees Celsius and the high altitude meant I was gasping for air. And then I worked out I had 30 minutes’ worth of fuel remaining.”

Mountain was flying the helicopter from Montreal to Guernsey: a nearly 4,000-mile journey that included fuel stops in the frozen wastelands of Northern Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. He says he took on the challenge when he realized the helicopter’s range was 350 miles and that it could fly only three hours at a time. It meant his longest leg required pumping fuel mid-flight.

“My previous goal was to trek to the North Pole, but it felt too easy,” says Mountain. “It didn’t feel dangerous enough: You could get rescued at any moment. Whereas with this challenge, flying over icebergs and forests far from civilization, an engine failure might mean death. And that’s when the adrenaline rush hits—it’s when you feel most alive.”

Mountain, who has also summited Everest, is one of many businesspeople taking on extreme adventures around the world. British billionaire Hamish Harding and Pakistani British executive Shahzada Dawood were among the passengers aboard the Titan submersible that disappeared in the North Atlantic Ocean on June 18. Operated by OceanGate, a US company that builds and launches manned submersibles, Titan was part of a tourist expedition to observe the wreckage of the Titanic at a depth of about 12,500 feet.

On June 22, remains from Titan were located by a remote-controlled underwater search vehicle about 500 meters from the wreckage of the Titanic , roughly 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The US Coast Guard believes all five passengers died following a catastrophic implosion .

The extreme tourism industry is niche, but growing. A swelling number of companies have emerged to facilitate dangerous adventures for the super-rich. OceanGate began offering trips aboard Titan to the site of the Titanic wreckage in 2021; seats on the latest, ill-fated trip cost $250,000 per person. However, safety concerns were raised as early as 2018, during Titan ’s quality-control stage, including questions about the 6.7-meter vessel’s experimental carbon-fiber hull structure (typically, deep-diving subs have hulls made from metal) and lack of industry certification. Past passengers have also shared details of problems with communication, navigation, and buoyancy during their 12-hour round trip to the Titanic .

With such extreme adventures, the work of operators is naturally risky. Seattle-based mountaineer Garret Madison offers bespoke expeditions to unnamed, unclimbed Himalayan peaks through his company, Madison Mountaineering. He explains that the average Everest death rate is 1 percent—a higher figure than for US service members in recent conflicts. “It’s the exhilaration of being on the mountain and coming face-to-face with danger that’s so attractive.”

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Since the pandemic, Madison has noticed an uptick in high-net-worth individuals booking out entire expeditions. “One client bought a whole trip to climb Mount Vinson in Antarctica for $200,000 last year,” he says. “It’s the latest trend: billionaires wanting their own private adventure with friends; they fly to Antarctica in a private jet. It’s next-level.”

Although his mountain expeditions are high-end, Madison says they come with minimum comfort. The greatest luxury he offers, he adds, is at Everest base camp: Warm showers, yoga sessions, and a dining tent with a movie screen are among the amenities on the $75,000 excursion. “The guys that come on my adventures ultimately want to suffer a little bit—that’s how they feel alive. Otherwise, they’d be staying at a Four Seasons five-star resort somewhere.”

However, a cottage industry of luxury extreme tourism also exists. White Desert Antarctica offers premium accommodation near the South Pole for $15,000 a night, replete with heated, opulently furnished pods and private chefs. Harding had also done that trip. “Hamish has been a true friend to White Desert for many years,” founder Patrick Woodhead said in a statement. “He has traveled with us to Antarctica a number of times, including with astronaut Buzz Aldrin when he visited.”

With these extreme tourism companies, safety generally comes with a high price tag. Madison says his service offers networks of expert guides and logistical know-how, as well as Western and Sherpa teams that coach, assist, and lead adventurers 8,000 meters above sea level. Extra oxygen, good food, and enhanced communications are also provided. “But you can do Everest cheaply and climb with your own tent and without a guide,” says Mountain. “There are plenty of operators that offer a rudimentary service—and that’s when it can get really dangerous. You’re left on your own.”

OceanGate appears to have had its feet in both camps. As the sole tourist operator providing trips to see the Titanic —and Titan one of only a handful of manned submersibles capable of reaching 12,500-foot depths—tickets weren’t cheap. At the same time, conditions inside the sub were far from luxurious, and the dive carried considerable risks. OceanGate’s waiver not only mentions death three times on page one , Titan was bolted from the outside—leaving those inside to survive on a finite amount of oxygen and rely on external support to get out of the sub, even after surfacing. The vessel was also controlled by a modified video game controller. “No one going on board would have been under any illusions that it was safe,” says Mountain. “That’s part of the appeal: The wreck is incredibly inaccessible, dangerous to visit, and steeped in mythology. And very few people have done it.”

Grace Lordan, associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics, says these dangerous expeditions have superseded luxury items for thrill-seeking entrepreneurs. “Pleasure and purpose tend to determine happiness, and it used to be about material purchases and philanthropy. Over time, redistributing wealth still provides purpose, but pleasure is harder to attain.”

Ego is also a factor, says Lordan. “Luxury products are more available to the masses now. And we all want better dinner party anecdotes. So entrepreneurs, who tend to have a higher tolerance for risk, are increasingly desiring experiences that very few others have done.” They’ve already achieved the extraordinary feat of establishing major companies, Lordan explains, so now they want to push themselves in their personal lives.

These throwback explorations—climbing a mountain or crossing the ocean—are also a way for billionaires, many of whom have accumulated their wealth through digital transactions, to experience their physical limits in the face of mortal danger.

“The demographic is mostly men in their fifties and sixties, looking to feel alive,” says Madison. “They want to traverse the Khumbu Icefall or the northern ridge of Everest’s death zone, rather than just sitting behind a desk and watching their net worth accumulate on a screen. The closer you perceive death, the more alive you feel.”

Mountain completed his transatlantic helicopter flight in July 2020. It was a self-organized trip, during the height of the pandemic, arranged through the Canadian, Danish, and Icelandic authorities. As a pilot, he was exempt from Covid-19 restrictions. “It was a bonkers idea, but being an entrepreneur means being very driven: You want to push boundaries and prove you’re in a different capacity to others. And it was such a rush—when I reached Scotland I knew it was the home straight, I was celebrating.”

The Titan tragedy underlines the reality that, by their nature, these kinds of extreme adventures mean dicing with death. But therein lies the appeal. “These challenges will always come with risk,” says Mountain. “Otherwise, everyone would be doing them.”

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Danger, prestige and authenticity draw thrill-seekers to adventure tourism

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Associate Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of South Carolina

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The tragic news of the destruction of the Titan submersible has brought attention to the thrilling, dangerous and expensive world of extreme tourism.

As a researcher who studies hospitality and tourism management , I pay attention to the trends in tourism and study ways in which organizations like theme parks and resorts operate and change over time.

Tourists are generally seeking more authentic experiences that occur without prescribed paths or known endpoints. Technology can often make the extreme environments of adventure tourism more safe, but at the bottom of the ocean, the vacuum of space or the cold of a mountain summit the consequences of failure can be high.

A group of people sitting in an open jeep near a lion.

Adventure tourism as authentic tourism

In recent years, there has been a trend in the tourism industry toward authentic experiences . More and more, people want to experience something unique and not in a preprogrammed or controlled setting.

An example of the difference between authentic and inauthentic tourism is the difference between a zoo and a safari. Zoos are built to allow large crowds of people to easily view unique and often dangerous animals. Zoos are typically a spectator experience and are very safe, but they offer little opportunity for visitors to interact with the animals.

A safari in Africa, by comparison, provides a much more authentic experience by removing a lot of the safety barriers between you and the animals. Most safaris bring a limited number of tourists, with guides who can provide closer interaction with the animals in their real environment. This, of course, also increases the risk for tourists, as the barriers and safety features found in a zoo don’t exist in the wild. The sense of danger that comes from authentic tourism often adds to the adventurous traveler’s experience .

The final appeal of adventure tourism is the status or prestige of a dangerous, expensive trip . Almost everyone can afford to visit a local zoo, whereas an African safari requires a level of spending that is a display of your status and income.

The same authenticity, danger and prestige apply to many types of adventure tourism, whether it is mountaineering, space tourism or trips to the bottom of the ocean.

A submersible on the surface of the water.

Technology doesn’t always mean safety

As technologies have improved, companies and tourists have been able to push the limits of safety for many activities. For example, over the past 30 years, roller coasters have gotten progressively taller, faster and more extreme to capture the attention of thrill-seekers . These rides are able to maintain high levels of safety thanks to better engineering and technology.

The narrative that advanced technology provides safety in extreme situations typically helps to reassure tourists the activity they choose to engage in is safe. The reality is that any activity – whether it’s crossing the street or visiting the wreck of the Titanic – will always carry some level of risk. The problem is that many of these extreme activities take place in very dangerous environments and have incredibly small margins for error. When something does go wrong, the consequences can be catastrophic or, as with the case of the Titan submarine, fatal.

A rocket launching from the desert.

Prevalence and legal limits

It is hard to get exact numbers on extreme tourism deaths per year, but when these sad events do occur, they typically receive a lot of attention from the press . As a tourism researcher, I follow these types of stories and feel comfortable saying that very few occur in the U.S.

In the U.S., there are federal , state and local tourism boards and agencies. More often than not, specialized agencies regulate activities most relevant to their areas of expertise – for example, the Federal Aviation Administration regulates space tourism , and national park and state park agencies permit mountaineering in many places. These organizations generally promote tourism and safe practices, but no amount of regulation and oversight can absolutely guarantee anyone’s safety. And for many activities, like deep-water tours, there is no mandatory certification process.

Perhaps the best advice for people seeking authentic, thrilling experiences would be to use the idea of “buyer beware.” If you are choosing to engage in extreme tourism, ask questions about what safety procedures are in place for whatever activity you are choosing to do. And if you are not comfortable with the answers you get, move on to another company or activity.

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The Titanic Sub and the Draw of Extreme Tourism

Diving to the bottom of the ocean is risky. So is flying to space. But people will keep paying to do both.

Four small warning signs in a passport that read "danger," "caution," "warning," and "notice"

The submersible craft’s journey to the bottom of the ocean and back was supposed to take about eight hours . Two and a half hours for the descent, a few hours to explore the century-old wreckage of the Titanic, and then another two and a half hours to return to the surface.

But the sub and its five passengers have now been missing in the Atlantic Ocean for three days. In that period, it has had no communication with the rest of the world. American and Canadian crews are searching the sea for any sign of the vessel, and time is against them. According to a U.S. Coast Guard official, the submersible has a finite supply of emergency oxygen, which is dwindling by the hour. What began as an adventure has turned into a frantic rescue operation.

The voyage, as grim as it seems now, is one of many treacherous tourism options for the wealthy. The lost submersible, named Titan, belongs to OceanGate Expeditions, a research and tourism company specializing in deep-sea excursions, which has charged $250,000 for a ticket to the Titanic. Wealthy adventurers could also pay hundreds of thousands to fly to the edge of space, or millions to orbit the Earth. When traveling to such dangerous, exotic environments, disaster is always a risk. And yet, people pay considerable money to take it on.

Read: What it’s like to be at the bottom of the ocean

As the rescue efforts continue, details about the submersible experience have emerged. The expensive voyage is far from luxurious. David Pogue, a CBS journalist who traveled on the submersible last year, recently called the cramped vehicle, with as much room inside as a minivan, “janky.” Before he boarded, Pogue signed a waiver that described Titan as an “experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death.” The New York Times reported today that a few dozen submersible experts, oceanographers, and deep-sea explorers wrote a letter in 2018 to OceanGate’s CEO—who is on board the missing vessel—expressing concern about the safety of the sub.

People still signed up, of course. The reason some human beings are drawn to such extreme tourism is rather straightforward, if slightly unsatisfying: They’re just like that. “We’re all wired a little bit differently,” James Petrick, a professor at Texas A&M University who studies tourist behavior, told me. Researchers categorize travelers and their motivations along a spectrum: On one end are the risk-averse psychocentrics , who travel least often and to familiar spots. On the other end are the risk-embracing allocentrics , who travel often and are more adventurous. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, Petrick said: “You may go on a vacation and bungee jump, but you want the comforts of your hotel room the rest of the time.”

Adding to Titan’s appeal was the submersible’s destination, the site of the most famous shipwreck in history, where more than 1,500 people perished. Visiting such gruesome places is part of a phenomenon known as “dark tourism.” Countless visitors travel to the sites of concentration camps, battlefields, and Ground Zero. Dark tourism brings out “something that we all have in common, which is our demise,” says J. John Lennon, a tourism professor at Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland, who coined the term with a colleague. “The means and method of that demise seem to exert an enduring fascination over many of us.” (Again, some of us are just like that.)

Read: There’s nothing wrong with posing for photos at Chernobyl

Tours of places such as Auschwitz can have historical and educational value; OceanGate says that every deep-sea dive involves some scientific research, and passengers are given the title of “mission specialist.” But the real draw is obvious in this now-deleted marketing line: “Become one of the few to see the Titanic with your own eyes.” The narrative surrounding the Titanic as an “unsinkable” ship further shrouds the wreckage in intrigue, turning a trip to the depths into “something between learning and voyeurism,” Lennon told me. Petrick wondered whether, as awful as it sounds, the story of the missing submersible might make the deep-sea location even more appealing for potential travelers.

Most can’t afford a $250,000 submersible trip, or any of the other kinds of travel popular with the ultra-wealthy. Consider space tourism, which is finally becoming routine after years of anticipation. A ride to the edge of space with Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s space company, costs $450,000. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin hasn’t publicly divulged its prices for its own edge-of-space trip, but one seat seems to have gone for $1.25 million. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which takes passengers into orbit and to the International Space Station, charges many more millions . Flying to space is becoming as much of a status symbol as climbing Mount Everest, and the spacefarer club is much more exclusive. “If you can go a step further than the pack, if you can do something more daring, intriguing, and enigmatic than the others—and if it’s photogenic—all the better,” Lennon said.

Read: The new ‘right stuff’ is money and luck

For those who can afford it, the draw of high-risk adventure is, apparently, irresistible. Among the five passengers on the OceanGate submersible is Hamish Harding, an aviation businessman and seasoned adventurer , who has set a diving record in the Mariana Trench and traveled to Antarctica with Buzz Aldrin. Last summer, before he joined the submersible voyage, Harding was a passenger on Blue Origin.

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Extreme Tourism Is a Booming Industry for the Rich, But Is It Ethical?

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By Bethanie Hestermann

In June, the world was gripped by the disappearance of a deep-sea submersible that was taking paying customers—essentially, tourists—more than 2 miles deep into the ocean to visit the Titanic wreck site. The customers aboard the OceanGate vessel Titan were seeking the adventure of a lifetime, and they had paid handsomely for it. 

What the passengers got instead was a real-life version of the terrors outlined in the waiver they’d signed before stepping foot on the submarine. After a frantic five-day search, the U.S. Coast Guard determined that the Titan had in fact imploded, killing everyone on board. The vessel couldn’t stand up to the pressures of the deep.

The debacle raises questions about this type of extreme tourism—the kind in which ordinary people (often ordinary rich people) do extraordinary things, like summiting Everest, going up into space, and diving into the deep sea. Is this ethical? Is it fair? Is it reckless?

Outdoors.com sought perspectives from three people who have interest in and experience with these areas of extreme tourism: high-altitude trekking and mountaineering, space flight, and deep-sea dives. Here’s what they had to say.

Everest, A Playground for the Rich

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It was a deadly spring climbing season on Mount Everest, which boasts the highest peak on Planet Earth. Reports suggest 17 people have died on these icy slopes in 2023. Already a sort of frozen graveyard, where doomed mountaineers like “Sleeping Beauty” and “Green Boots” serve as trail markers and somber warnings to those who shuffle past, Everest is certainly not for most. 

In recent years, though, it’s become more accessible to anyone who fancies themselves worthy of this hallowed peak—as long as they can pay the price, which can, in some cases, exceed $100,000. Nepal’s government issued a record number of permits in 2023 to people keen to summit. Is this exclusive adventure becoming a bit too accessible? 

Gelje Sherpa knows a thing or two about Everest and high-altitude trekking. He was the sherpa who, in May , helped rescue a Malaysian climber from Mount Everest’s “death zone.” Since he began his high-altitude career in 2017, 30-year-old Gelje has summited 13 of the 8,000-meter peaks and remains the youngest person to summit K2 in winter. He’s also led more than 25 successful expeditions to 8,000-meter peaks, including Everest, and he’s participated in more than 50 rescues across several peaks and trekking expeditions. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gelje Sherpa (@gelje_sherpa_)

Gelje makes his living guiding gung-ho climbers to the highest places in the world, but he’s also seen how humbling these expeditions can be, even to those who arrive prepared. So what does he think about Everest’s growing popularity and accessibility?

“The world of high-altitude mountaineering has exploded in the past years, and as [a] guide I have seen firsthand the impacts this has had,” Gelje said in an interview with Outdoors.com . “More and more people are embracing this concept of ‘nothing is impossible,’ mostly because of documentaries that have been released. This, to some people, means turning up to an 8,000-meter peak with no training and no idea of the skills involved. This is deadly. More and more people are involved in accidents because they just don’t know how to look after themselves.”

He suggests that not every person with deep pockets should be able to show up and get a permit to climb Everest—that’s a recipe for disaster. If the number of permits continues to increase every year, it’s possible the number of deaths will increase, too (although, it’s worth noting that most people blame climate change for the high death toll this year).  

Another problem is that as demand increases, companies raise their prices, essentially making the trek too expensive for many who are qualified to attempt the climb.

“[The] way it’s looking, yes, it’s just becoming a playground for the rich,” Gelje said. “Everest for sure is getting more and more expensive each year and limiting to people who have had this dream to climb it but could never afford it. [. . .] It’s a huge shame because Everest is such a stunning mountain to climb, but it’s just too overcrowded now, it takes away the beauty of it all.” 

“We also have to control how we move forward, potentially being more selective with clients who can receive a permit to climb an 8,000-meter peak,” he added. “This could mean making sure they have already summited a 6,000er before or [passing] a basic test to see their knowledge, et cetera.”

Another way to keep the danger factor in check, Gelje said, would be to limit permits. He doesn’t think this solution would go over very well, though.

“I think the only way to do it is by restricting permits to people who have the proper experience before coming to an 8,000er,” he explained. “However, this is highly unlikely, as it would probably half the number of people coming to Everest, and both the companies and the government would probably not back that idea.”

Gelje believes it’s also important to keep the sport open to newcomers who deserve the opportunity to try to make their dreams come true. In fact, asked whether “ordinary” people should be climbing Everest, Gelje is all for it, as long as they have the right experience. 

“Adri, my climbing partner, was an ‘ordinary’ person five years ago, but she trained hard and it was obvious, and now she is a mountaineer,” Gelje said.

Gelje and Adriana Brownlee “Adri” own AGA Adventures , and they help people grow in the mountaineering space and prepare for their dream quests, whether that’s trekking Annapurna Circuit or climbing Everest itself. Between the two of them, Adri and Gelje have three Guinness World Records, 30+ 8,000-meter peak summits, and 40+ mountaineering expeditions under their belts.

Space, the Final Frontier, Conquered?

ethics-accessibility-and-cost-of-extreme-tourism

Earlier this summer, a Blue Origin rocket engine exploded during testing at a facility in Texas—a harsh reminder that spaceflight is a dangerous undertaking. Blue Origin is Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos’s private space company that has successfully taken paying customers up into space aboard the New Shepard rocket, which is named after American astronaut Alan Shepard. 

Dylan Taylor was aboard the New Shepard on December 11, 2021, when he became one of the relatively few humans who have traveled to space—and one of even fewer humans to have traveled to space as a commercial astronaut. 

Taylor is a business leader and philanthropist. He is the chairman and CEO of Voyager Space and founder of the nonprofit Space for Humanity . As a cherry on top, he’s also one of the very few who have descended into the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench—the deepest known place on Earth. 

As an extreme tourist himself, Taylor is a believer in democratizing the world’s most exclusive adventures. 

“I’m in the camp that says space is the next big thing for humanity, that it’s sort of the blank canvas that we have the ability to sort of reimagine what’s possible, treat each other better, have a better civilization, those kinds of concepts,” he said in an exclusive interview with Outdoors.com . 

For Taylor, going to space was nothing short of life-changing.

“It is a very profound and transformative experience to see the earth from space, [and] it is very apparent when you’re up there that this is really a miracle that we have here on Earth,” he explained. “The rest of the universe is not like this. So far as we know, it’s cold and dark and hostile, and we have this sort of amazing, beautiful paradise here on Earth that sometimes I think we take for granted. It is very apparent when you’re up there how fragile the ecosystem is.”

Taylor paid a lot of money for this experience (he couldn’t share just how much, because he signed an NDA saying he wouldn’t), but he wants more people to be able to experience what he experienced, and this is something Space for Humanity is actively doing. He believes those who go to space come back with a new perspective on Planet Earth—and a renewed drive to protect it.

“There’s this notion that going to space has this transformative power—the overview effect, if you will—and that’s really a gift that should be shared widely,” Taylor said. “It shouldn’t be just professional astronauts or very wealthy people that benefit from that.” 

Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut program fields thousands of applications each year from people who want to become citizen astronauts. They apply in part by outlining how their trip will empower them to be a force for good here on Earth. The program sponsors a new citizen astronaut each year, with the caveat that he or she will work on the projects or initiatives outlined in his or her application upon return.

While Space for Humanity is working to democratize space travel, for the most part, it’s still the realm of billionaires. Is space travel, then, becoming a prestigious feather in a very rich person’s cap?

“I think people have different motivations,” Taylor said. “Some, I think, are legitimately trying to check boxes and go down the list of all the different things you can do. Other people are just, like, in my case, just being super passionate about a lifelong dream.”

“But I think that desire to look [at] what’s over the hill and explore and do things that are unique and challenging, I think that’s sort of been embedded in humanity since the beginning of time.”

While humans’ desire to explore and push themselves to the limits is not new, the technology to take them to new heights—or depths—is relatively new, and, as OceanGate recently proved, technology can fail. Asked whether it’s reckless to take regular people to space, Taylor says no.

“I think it’s risky, and it’s really important that people who do those trips really understand the risks involved,” he explained. “But I don’t think it’s reckless.”

“I think it’s risky . . . but I don’t think it’s reckless.” Dylan Taylor

In the case of space, Taylor says regulations have kept it a tier or more above, say, OceanGate, but for-profit companies in this realm, in his view, should be investing profits back into making these extreme journeys safer and more accessible.

“Are there operators who are taking undue risk for monetary gain? I’ll leave that to others to decide, [but] in the case of space flight, it’s very tightly regulated, so it’s pretty difficult to do a money grab without crossing some boundaries that regulators would not allow you to,” he explained. 

“But I think a lot of these experiences are for-profit, [and] as long as those profits are reinvested back into perfecting the technology and making it more accessible, that’s probably a good thing. I think where it’s not a good thing is if people take undue risks for financial benefit and they don’t disclose what those risks are,” Taylor added. “I think that’s where it crosses the line in my view.”

Into the Abyss

Whether you book a ticket to space, participate in extreme sports like skydiving or big-wave surfing , hike in a national park, or drive to the grocery store down the street, safety is never guaranteed. However, when talking about the extremes of high-altitude climbs, being rocketed into space, and descending to the depths of the ocean, danger is more front and center in the conversation because a lot can go wrong, and, if it does, help may not be available. 

For the passengers of OceanGate’s Titan this past June, the chance to see the Titanic with their own eyes was worth the expense and the risk. If the demand is there, can we fault the companies that deliver the supply to meet the demand? Is an occasional disaster just part of human exploration?

who-is-on-submarine

Joe Dituri is a deep-sea diver who spent 28 years in the Navy, serving part of that time as a Navy Diving Saturation Officer. He also has a PhD in biomedical engineering and is known as “ Dr. Deep Sea .” In June, Dr. Dituri surfaced after a 100-day jaunt living underwater. Dituri was his own test subject in Project NEPTUNE, in which he lived in the Jules’ Undersea Lodge, an underwater habitat in Key Largo, Florida, for 100 days straight, conducting daily experiments in human physiology.

Dituri is a huge proponent of pushing the envelope for human exploration. 

“My personal investment in this whole thing stems around the advancement of the human race,” he said in a video call with Outdoors.com from his Undersea Oxygen Clinic in Tampa, Florida. “So, we are advancing humans, we’re going down the road to that next thing that we’re doing. Once we solve this, we cure that. Once we do this, what’s left? Exploration of our galaxy, exploration of other galaxies. Exploration of all the world, right, to find everything that there is to be found. It’s the whole Star Trek thing. It’s to ‘boldly go where no man has gone before.’ But what is this about? It really is about exploration. It’s the only thing that will be left in the end.”

Dituri has traveled nearly 2,000 feet deep in the ocean, but not as a tourist. It was part of his training as a deep-sea emergency rescue unit in the U.S. military. Even still, he says democratizing adventure and exploration is critical, and it’s only reckless if participants aren’t trained and prepared.

“It is important to push the boundaries; nay, it is required to push the boundaries. We go boldly. This is what we do. This is, as a society, what we need to do,” Dituri said. “But, we need to perform risk mitigation. [. . .] When I jump out of an airplane, I have two parachutes on my back. It’s not just one. I always have a backup, and I’m well trained in what could go wrong. So . . . that’s the overall goal. You mitigate the risk down to an acceptable level, with training and education, and that’s what we’re looking to do. That’s the only way to pursue and go forward and basically make meaningful contributions.”

“When I jump out of an airplane, I have two parachutes on my back. It’s not just one. I always have a backup, and I’m well trained in what could go wrong.” – Joe Dituri, Dr. Deep Sea

Therefore, Dituri does not see the democratization of deep-sea exploration as a money grab. 

“The quote from President Kennedy comes up,” he added. “ We choose to do these things. We choose to go to the moon and these other things in this century. Not because they’re easy, but because they’re hard .” 

“This is the whole spirit of exploration,” Dituri concludes. “We need to gain and gather that knowledge and information . . . so that we can give it to the rest of humanity.”

If viewed through a glass-half-full lens, then, every implosion and explosion equates to some massive lessons learned—it’s one small step for man, one giant leap for humankind , so to speak. Not all extreme adventures that end badly offer up some consolation prize of knowledge or experience, though. Some just rip away a person’s life. Whether that person signed a waiver, handed over a fat check, or simply lived for the thrill, it nonetheless begs the question: Is there such a thing as an adventure too extreme, or are today’s most extreme adventures the proving ground for the next era in human exploration?

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Skiing in Antarctica. Dinner with the pope. Illegal border crossings? Extreme adventure tourism is hitting new heights.

It’s easier than ever to visit some of the world’s most inaccessible places — if you can afford it..

When Boston’s big-spending travelers reach out to Kristin Chambers, they’ve typically already seen it all.

Skiing in the Alps? Safaris in Tanzania? Yacht trips to Italy’s Amalfi Coast?

Check, check, and check.

Even visits to glacier-strewn Antarctica aren’t as glamorous as they once were, now that plenty of average folks head there by cruise ship each year.

For the truly restless, a popular new trip the upscale travel consultant has arranged takes clients to a remote camp of futuristic space pods on a sheet of ice near the South Pole, a place only reachable by private plane.

At $150,000 per person for a week in the bitter cold, it isn’t cheap. But that’s “extreme tourism” for you.

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“There’s always those that are really looking to up-level and go where almost no one on Earth can go,” said Chambers, who runs the Newbury Street firms D.A. Luxury Travel and TRAVELLUSTRE. “They’ve been super successful in their careers. They’ve accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. So, what’s next?”

A growing and sometimes controversial industry exists to provide exclusive, expensive, and dangerous travel itineraries to the world’s wealthiest would-be explorers, people who seek to push the boundaries and embark on journeys to the ends of the earth, the edge of space, or the bottom of the ocean.

Last week’s tragic loss of five people aboard the Titan submersible — a vessel that, for $250,000 per person, brought travelers 12,500 feet underwater to the Titanic wreckage — has brought renewed attention to these out-of-reach opportunities and exposed the risks and ethical concerns involved.

Despite the dangers, such trips have been growing in popularity for years, as previously unthinkable treks become more accessible to anyone with deep enough pockets.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin routinely brings paying customers to near-space for a rumored $1 million . Climbers are flocking to Mount Everest in record numbers , with some paying six figures for “fully custom” experiences . And amateur adventurers can now get to the North and South poles in just days — a trip that would take months a few decades ago.

Submarine trips deep underwater have been offered not just to the Titanic, but also — for three times the price — to the Mariana Trench , the deepest part of the oceans.

“The more technology improves, faster and faster, and the desire and the will exists to do these more extreme trips, I think they’ll be more prominent and prevalent,” said Leora Lanz, assistant dean at Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration. “People want to make sure that they do things that have great meaning. For some, that’s extreme travel.”

The Titan submersible imploded on a dive to the Titanic last week.

It’s also, at its core, a competition.

Modern adventurers don’t just want to scale Everest anymore. They also tackle the “ Seven Summits ,” a series of trips to the tallest peaks on every continent. Then both poles. And then the “ Second Seven ,” the world’s next-highest peaks, just to be in even more exclusive company.

Eric Larsen, a seasoned adventurer who offers tours to the North and South poles , trips that start at $50,000, is familiar with the clientele that’s drawn to these exclusive voyages.

“It’s a pretty specific demographic,” he said. “It attracts a lot of very focused, affluent, goal-driven people. It’s a community of people who want to be the most elite.”

Most, he said, are men between the ages of 40 and 60. Having amassed large fortunes, they’re competitive by nature, and impressing — or besting — their peers is an increasingly difficult challenge.

“There’s a desire to be unique and distinctive from everyone else. That’s where you get into this race to do all these things,” Larsen said. “They’ve got something they’re trying to prove.”

But Larsen worries that something is lost when modern navigation and aviation make visiting the Earth’s farthest reaches as convenient as booking a dinner reservation — albeit a very expensive one.

At the highest tiers, he said, adventures just aren’t what they used to be.

“If you go to space, are you an adventurer because you sit in a rocket and get flown there?” he said. “We have these new ways of adventuring, but we’re still using this old lexicon.”

If anything, the increased accessibility to extreme vacations over the past two decades has fueled a rush to up the ante, said Shannon Stowell, chief executive of the Adventure Travel Trade Association , a business group whose members include OceanGate Expeditions, the company that launched the Titan sub.

Dog-sledding tours in the tundra — some including helicopter trips mid-journey to luxe hotels — are popular in elite circles. So are chopper-bound journeys to Antarctic mountains for skiers who want to “ski down slopes that literally no one has ever skied before,” Stowell said.

The more unattainable the itinerary, the more valuable. And that doesn’t always involve putting their lives on the line.

“It’s more the rarity than the risk,” he said. “I know a travel agent who gets people dinner with the pope.”

Sometimes, though, the requests leave him speechless. One client said she wanted to travel to Mexico, then link up with a smuggler and illegally cross the US border, just for the thrill.

“We gave that a hard ‘No,’” Stowell said. “We said, there’s no way we’re going to be involved in anything, first of all, illegal, and second, insane.”

Among ecotourists, people who use vacation time to appreciate and learn about the natural world, extreme trips are on the rise, too.

In the waters off South Africa, Australia, and Mexico, researchers have embraced offering dives with great white sharks, trips that can cost $2,500 per person.

The market for those adventures has “exploded in the last 20 years,” said Greg Skomal, shark expert and marine biologist at the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries.

There are debates over its effects on the environment, he said, including worries it will habituate sharks to humans. But Skomal said demystifying sharks is a noble goal, even if the experience isn’t available to the average traveler.

“Exposing people to educational experiences like that helps them learn to respect and enjoy the ocean, and it fosters conservation,” he said.

Extreme tourism “attracts a lot of very focused, affluent, goal-driven people. It’s a community of people who want to be the most elite,” said expedition leader Eric Larsen.

Still, extreme tourism in increasingly far-flung natural environments poses some concerns, said Lorri Krebs, executive director of the Center for Economic Development and Sustainability at Salem State University.

She has seen TikTok cliff jumpers who find abandoned quarries or other off-limits areas deep in the wilderness and film themselves leaping into the depths below on parachutes or bungee cords.

When accidents happen, rescue efforts in these remote regions — as demonstrated by the search for the Titan — can be a major undertaking.

“The cost of recovery is huge in those situations,” Krebs said. It can also be harmful, particularly when “the culture of extreme tourism brings people to fragile habitats, the places that are most at risk.”

Krebs worries about where the drive to explore more exclusive corners of the globe might lead. And she frets that sometimes it’s all to score points, be it at the world’s most exclusive cocktail parties, or on Instagram.

“It becomes, ‘Can I be the first? Can I be the only?’” she said. “The quest to be in that small percentage of people is what they’re after.”

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, Shannon Stowell’s last name was incorrect on the second reference. The Globe regrets the error.

Spencer Buell can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @SpencerBuell .

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Why is extreme 'frontier travel' booming despite the risks?

by Anne Hardy, Can Seng Ooi, Hanne E.F. Nielsen and Joseph M. Cheer, The Conversation

submersible

The world has watched in shock as rescue crews feverishly search for the Titan submersible vehicle, which disappeared while attempting to take tourists to view the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.

The horror of the incident raises questions as to why people engage in risky tourism activities in remote locations and whether there should be more restrictions to what adrenaline-seeking tourists can do.

What is frontier tourism?

This type of travel, known as " frontier tourism ", is becoming big business.

The wider adventure tourism industry is already worth billions of dollars —and is growing quickly. Frontier tourism is an exclusive and extreme form of adventure travel. The trips are very expensive, aim to overstimulate the senses and go to the outer limits of our planet—the deep oceans, high mountains , polar areas—and even space.

Frontier tourism is not new; humans have explored remote locations for millennia. Pasifika people used the stars to navigate the oceans for migration and trade. Europeans sailed to the edges of what they believed to be a flat Earth.

In recent years, however, frontier tourism has attracted widespread attention thanks to the common occurrence of long queues on Mount Everest, the trending TikTok phenomenon of crossing the #DrakePassage in Antarctica and the rapid development of space tourism for the wealthy.

The rise of travel content sharing on social media and revenge travel following COVID-19 have contributed to the surge in its popularity.

Why are we so obsessed with extreme forms of tourism?

Risky activities release chemicals in the brain that can be addictive. Research suggests engaging in risky tourism activities, such as scaling a high mountain, can bring about feelings of accomplishment and euphoria. Travelers report feeling alive and experiencing a sense of transformation.

Some are also attracted to the pristine, untouched and remote aspects of the locations that they visit. Furthermore, the element of fantasy associated with imagining certain places or stories, like the movie Titanic, can be alluring.

Besides physical frontiers, there is also the thrill people get at pushing the human body to its limits and facing one's fears. Base-jumping, skydiving, bungee jumping and polar plunges are common examples of this.

In a slightly more mundane way, even tasting " scary food " pushes tourists outside of their comfort zone and helps them feel alive .

Still others make extreme tourist journeys to follow in the footsteps of their heroes , such as those who travel to Antarctica to pay homage to explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Extreme and risky activities not only make participants feel euphoric, but they also convey status. When bucket lists are ticked off and experiences shared on social media, this brings bragging rights. Research suggests many travelers seek recognition for undertaking the first, longest or most extreme experiences possible.

But frontier tourism is clearly not for all. It is usually only accessible to a privileged few, as the tragic circumstances of the Titan highlight. Passengers onboard the vessel reportedly paid US$250,000 for the voyage.

What are the impacts of frontier tourism?

Beyond the unspeakable angst that friends and family must endure when things go wrong, there are many other impacts of this form of tourism.

This type of travel can create environmental harm and negatively impact local communities . For example, after decades of mass mountaineering, the environmental impact on Mount Everest must be addressed.

And when mishaps do occur, the cost of search and rescue efforts can be massive and put rescue teams at great risk. The plight of frontier tourists are usually the focus of media reports, while emergency responders are often overlooked.

Recent efforts by sherpas such as Nimsdai Purja are trying to overcome this issue. Through the Netflix documentary, 14 Peaks, he publicizes the behind-the-scene preparations and heavy lifting work done by sherpas who guide and rescue tourists up Everest and other mountains.

Frontier tourism is not going away

Despite tragedies like the Titan disappearance, tourists remain attracted to the quest for the most unique experiences in the most remote, uncharted places.

Tourists also increasingly feel able to embark on trips once perceived as too dangerous because technology and other innovations have ostensibly made them safer and more accessible.

In many instances that danger remains, but the commercial transaction strips away the perceived risks involved. Marketing materials aim to sell "safe" adventures, with the risks are often listed in the fineprint. A polar plunge in Antarctica, for instance, is often marketed as safe because participants are attached to a tether and the swim time is limited to prevent hypothermia.

Two decades ago, in forecasting the growth of space tourism, anthropologist Valene Smith said what tourists want, the industry will provide. This has become a truism, as the Titan voyages demonstrate.

The massive growth of frontier tourism could lead to even greater problems if the industry doesn't respond in the right way. If travelers are going to expose themselves to extreme risks, whose responsibility is it, then, to ensure their safety and recovery should accidents occur?

Many tourism businesses and travel insurance companies make risks known to their guests. But regulations on disclosing risks differ between countries. These means travelers may have to evaluate the risks themselves, and this is fraught with danger if company standards are low.

One solution is frontier tourism might be best experienced in controlled and safe environments through digital storytelling or augmented and mixed reality . However, this may not be enough to satisfy the adrenaline junkies out there.

As the Titan incident illustrates, the unpredictable nature and unintended consequences of frontier tourism are very real things. While money can allow us to travel almost anywhere, it's worth considering whether some places should just remain untouched, sacred and off limits completely.

Provided by The Conversation

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A Failed Trip to the Titanic Displays the Dangers of Extreme Tourism

Photo: A submarine. The Oceangate submersible Titan. The United States Coast Guard is searching for the 21-foot submersible Titan from the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince. The 5 person crew submerged Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince lost contact with them approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the vessel's dive.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owns the Titan, reportedly charges $250,000 per ticket and requires participants to sign a lengthy release form acknowledging the possible dangers involved. Photo via Alamy

Fascination with Titanic Underscores Dangers of Extreme Tourism

Bu’s school of hospitality administration dean on the tragedy of the submersible titan, what’s driving this industry, and what customers should look for when booking a risk-filled adventure, amy laskowski.

What was supposed to be an eight-hour trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic is now looking like a largely avoidable tragedy. The harrowing search for the Titan ended Thursday, as the US Coast Guard announced they found evidence that the submersible vessel had probably imploded and all five passengers were believed to be dead. The Coast Guard found pieces of the Titan on the ocean floor about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic .

The world was gripped by the search for the lost vessel, which took passengers 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface to view the famed ocean liner that sank in 1912, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owns the Titan, appeals to the very wealthy. The company reportedly charges $250,000 per ticket and requires participants to sign a lengthy release form acknowledging the possible dangers involved. David Pogue, a CBS correspondent who took a trip on the vessel last year for a story, described the Titan as “improvised,” and the New York Times reported that in 2018, dozens of submersible experts, oceanographers, and deep-sea explorers wrote a letter to OceanGate’s CEO expressing concern about the vessel’s safety. According to CNN, “OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush has also repeatedly claimed that existing submersible regulations needlessly prioritize passenger safety over commercial innovation.”

Now, many experts are wondering whether increased scrutiny will be placed on the largely unregulated extreme tourism industry and the companies that offer expensive, status symbol trips. In addition to deep sea travel, those trips include race car driving on ice in Finland, exploring pyramids in war-torn Sudan, and flights to the International Space Station. 

BU Today spoke with Arun Upneja , dean of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration, about the extreme tourism industry and what might change in the aftermath of the Titan disaster.

With Arun Upneja

Bu today: can you talk about the phenomenon of extreme tourism.

Upneja: Extreme tourism is anything that is high-risk, and it happens in often dangerous, remote locations. It provides a unique and thrilling experience for participants. It challenges your physical and mental limits. Some examples might be mountain climbing, skydiving, bungee jumping, and white water rafting. There are so many different kinds of extreme tourism that people crave for various reasons.

BU Today: But extreme tourism seems to be getting more elaborate—it’s the ultra-wealthy taking trips to outer space with Virgin Galactic or trekking to see silverback gorillas in Rwanda. What’s behind the appeal? 

Upneja: With the rise of social media and people hearing about all of these extremes, people just want more and more thrill. And the wealthy are obviously able to pay. They want to be in the news and have bragging rights. There are so many reasons why people seek adventure. Once you’ve done something multiple times, you don’t get that thrill, that rush anymore. And so you seek more and more dangerous activities. 

BU Today: Has extreme travel become more accessible? Have outfitters tailored these trips and come up with bigger and better ideas, as they’ve seen the demand for it?

Upneja: In a way, yes. Let’s take skydiving, for example. Years ago, you didn’t have as much equipment, and it wasn’t something most people could afford. But now more people can afford it. And don’t forget that if you look at the statistics, you’ll find it’s much safer than going out in a car. The risk of an equipment malfunction is actually very minuscule. 

BU Today: Do outfitters do a good enough job of making their clients aware of the risks when they go on these trips? 

Upneja: The better organizers and outfits will give you a complete rundown of the risks. I read a report somewhere that they mentioned the word “death” three times on the first page with this Titanic trip. Good outfits will make you conscious of all the risks and will take steps to avoid those risks. There are so many regulations. Many countries have regulations that cover licensing, safety equipment, operator qualifications, and so forth. There are also government bodies, tourism bodies, and industry associations. If you are going to a local place that does bungee jumping, most likely they are doing hundreds of bungee jumps a day. Most likely they are licensed by the local authorities, the equipment is inspected, and they have trained operators.  But this [OceanGate trip] was just very unique. There aren’t too many trips like this. And [it seems like] the operators were warned and were not very conscious of all the risks and taking steps to avoid them. 

BU Today: Do you think travel outfitters will face more scrutiny after this disaster?

Upneja: After every major news story like this, there is a lot of initial interest, but that interest very soon dies down. I really doubt there will be a new scrutiny on these adventure-based trips from this one event alone. I think for people who are spending money on these one-off trips, this event will hopefully prompt some of them to reevaluate.  Every time somebody comes up with a new, risky way to potentially almost kill yourself, and an event happens, the local governments suddenly wake up and say, ‘Okay, how did you do this here? And is there anything in the regulations that could have prevented you?’ But this was also happening in the open ocean, where no governing body exists. [It’s up to the country] where these people belong, or where the boats that carried the submarine are based. Hopefully, these countries now say, “Okay, if you’re engaging in anything risky, then you need to be fully licensed to do that.” 

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when the regulations change the cost of a trip will increase. that’s one thing about the titan, it was built to be cost effective not necessarily safe. submersible tourism industry now has to deal with skepticism about safety even though the titan has very little in common with the tyical submersible in the caribbean and australia which travels only hundreds of feet underwater and is already heavily regulated.

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Extreme Tourism—Trips That Go Way Beyond The Comfort Zone

Sheldon Chalet Glacier Trekking, a kind of extreme tourism

Photo: Sheldon Chalet

For most travelers, the risks involved with getting to the airport, boarding the plane, and arriving on time at our destination (with luggage) can be considered extreme tourism. These are the travelers who see a sign on the beach that reads, Swim at Your Own Risk, and refrain from swimming.

But for others, they dive right in. These risk-takers crave vacations that are all about storm chasing, heliskiing, BASE jumping, exploring the depths of the ocean, and the infiniteness of space in a capsule. Bragging rights for these travelers go way beyond a colorful pina colada posting on Instagram.

But why? Is it the thrill, the rush, the dare, the danger? Or, maybe it’s something else.

“Some say that for explorers ‘the risk is the point,’” says Philippe Brown, founder of luxury travel company Brown and Hudson which runs exclusive trips including Titanic tours in partnership with OceanGate, the sub-operator behind the Titan. “I disagree. Whilst this might be the case for an extreme minority, for most of the explorers I’ve spent time with, the risk is almost never the point.”

The point is the achievement, says Brown, it’s the story they’re telling, the challenge, the transformation or growth it brings, and usually the opportunity to inspire others or draw attention to a cause. “Risk is a fact of these endeavors, it might even be a point of some satisfaction after the event, one that is considered, evaluated, and mitigated but it’s not the objective,” he says. “If it were, anyone could heighten their risk stakes much more easily and at lower cost juggling chainsaws or befriending a Fer-de-lance.”

His clients run the gamut from retail, dairy farming, property development, investment banking, bitcoin, food processing, and distribution, and quite a few Silicon Valley types, mostly individuals but increasingly corporations, too.

“They’re often clients who will add expedition travel to a year of other more conventional forms of luxury travel we might design for them: road cycling in Mallorca, diving in the Maldives, hiking in Patagonia, or escapes to London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo.”

Interest in extreme tourism continues to grow, says Brown. “Based on the increased number of clients retaining our services it certainly seems like there’s an upward trend,” he says. “As the possibilities for near-space and deep sea exploration have grown, so has the interest. Adventurous, explorer visionaries have always embarked on these kinds of endeavors.”

Brown also points out that, as the number of billionaires increases—currently 2,700-plus—so does the number of people with the potential to undertake such experiences. “Advances in technology and social media make their exploits even more visible,” says Brown.

“Our approach is utterly bespoke,” says Brown. “Wow scenarios, plan Bs, rescues, etc. are discussed in advance of the expedition as part of the risk assessment process. This process turns the client from a passive participant into a conscious and personally responsible explorer.”

Whatever the reasons or excuses for seeking out dangerous travel experiences, extreme tourism to precarious places while participating in dangerous activities has a very willing and able audience eager to get at it. Here are some popular ideas for extreme adventures.

BASE Jumping BASE jumping is jumping off of a fixed object, such as a Building, Antenna, Span, or Earth, with a parachute. To learn how to BASE jump on your own can take years of skydive experience, and requires 200-plus skydives before learning to base jump solo. Tandem BASE, a company out of Twin Falls, Idaho, gives novices an opportunity to try.

Jumping all four objects in BASE (Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth) is rare—less than five people in the world have accomplished this so feat.

One of the most polar spots: Twin Falls’ I.B. Perrine Bridge, for the experience of leaping from the 486-foot bridge, free-falling and floating to the Snake River Canyon floor—this is the same river/canyon that 'Evel' Knievel attempted to jump on a customized rocket nearly 50 years ago. 

The risks are outlined on the site. “BASE Jumping is not safe, but it can be done safely,” it reads. “BASE jumping is like any other extreme sport, there are inherent risks that require careful training and execution. Failure to follow that training can lead to serious injury or death.”

While the equipment used has improved by leaps and bounds over the old-style round parachute and is reliable when used properly (making BASE jumping as safe or safer than extreme sports) there is no perfect parachute, no perfect instructor, no perfect weather condition, and for that matter no perfect student, according to the site. All the more compelling reasons for risk-takers to sign on.

Most tandem base jumps are made at the Perrine Bridge but the company also offers exotic jumps in other locations around the world.

Storm Chasing “The view of a severe storm is one thing but the feel of the storm is only experienced firsthand,” says Kim George, guest relations manager, at Tempest Tours, Inc., a storm-chasing expedition company. “What makes it so compelling is that it is never the same, all the storms are unique so when you go out for the day, no one knows what you are going to get. Even on the days you do not end up seeing a storm or one that is not as good or as long as you would have hoped for, tomorrow there is always a chance of seeing that once-in-a-lifetime event.”

It’s the science and romance of storm chasing that appeals to storm chasers, and Tempest has a 50-plus percent return guest each year. “It becomes addictive,” says George. Aside from the chase, it is the friendships that are formed, she says. “Some guests return year after year on the same tour to reconnect.”

Safety first—all staff receive an annual orientation which centers around very strict safety guidelines, says George. “All guides must be approved by our insurance company prior to each season. Members of our team are responsible for creating materials for the National Weather Service to train storm spotter groups nationwide.”

And never are guests driven into tornadoes and other damaging storms, but close enough.

The chase is done in eight-passenger vans, and everyone gets a window seat with unobstructed sky views. “Our vehicles are equipped with state-of-the-art chase equipment including redundant weather radar and GPS systems,” says George. “They are built for safe and reliable travel including the highest-rated truck tires in the world (for wet traction, heat, and tread) and best-rated batteries and roadside safety equipment.”

Base cities are Arlington, Texas, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Denver, Colorado, thanks to their “proximity to the highest average risk of significant storms for the corresponding time period.” Trips span five-to-six days during peak tornado activity.

Storm chaser guests stay at “comfortable Tornado Alley style motels, usually in small, rural towns.”

It’s not just the chase. “An important part of storm chasing is just being on the Great Plains during the most beautiful time of the year,” says George. “Farms, ranches, wheat fields, wildflowers, friendly people, and good food are all part of the experience.”

Sheldon Chalet This eco-conscious, remote luxury glacier outpost in Alaska hosts backcountry skiing, climbing, glacier trekking, and ice crevasse exploration opps. The five-bedroom chalet is perched on an exclusive five-acre nunatak (glacier rock outcropping) in Denali National Park on the southern flanks of North America’s tallest massif at a 5,818-foot elevation in the Don Sheldon Amphitheater of the Ruth Glacier—and is accessible only by helicopter.

At the end of the day, guests retreat to Sheldon Chalet for a sauna, gourmet dinner, and the glow of the northern lights. Stays include guides, gear, a chef who prepares Alaskan cuisine, concierge, and experiences at the only destination on the flanks of North America’s highest mountain; there are no roads, rails, or trails accessing the area, and the closest town, Talkeetna, is a 55-mile flight away.

Nomadic Road Overland expedition specialist, Nomadic Road’s mission is about helping discerning travelers who are seeking meaningful experiences to make the leap from mere tourists to brave explorers with safe and guided extreme adventures.

These are not your grandparents' road trip experiences, but off-road journeys with often unscripted itineraries. Travelers are also able to take the wheel and explore with expedition vehicles, navigating remote and challenging terrains.

One of the most extreme trips this year is the Road to the Atacama Desert—a road trip to the driest desert outside of the polar regions, in Northwest Argentina and Northern Chile. It is an unknown territory that demands serious effort and is a landscape so parched that it cannot support animal or plant life at its inner core and has been likened to Mars.

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The Deadly Delight of Extreme Tourism: Balancing Thrills, Risks, and Responsibility

In the pursuit of adventure and thrill, how far are we willing to go, even at the cost of our life?

On 18th June 2023, tragedy struck when the Titan submersible imploded, leading to the death of five people on board an expedition to witness the remains of the Titanic shipwreck. Despite the risks and dangers involved, extreme tourism is gaining popularity day by day.

Extreme tourism, also known as shock tourism, is a form of travel that is characterised by adventure and even physical danger. Extreme tourists visit places considered extremely unsafe due to physical or political reasons. It is a small but growing part of adventure tourism that became popular during the Covid lockdown. Whether it's visiting the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, travelling to space like Jeff Bezos, or trekking on an active volcano, extreme tourism offers an adrenaline rush caused by the element of risk.

Extreme tourism comes at an exorbitant price and is sought-after by the wealthy. Passengers on the Titanic wreckage expedition paid a whopping $250,000 per person. In a world plagued by poverty, war, and destruction, it is disheartening to see the wealthy squandering enormous amounts of money on extreme tourism, even though it puts their lives on the line. Before embarking on their journey, the passengers had to sign a waiver that prominently mentioned the word "death" thrice on the first page. Ironically, these life-threatening risks seem to attract customers rather than dissuade them.

In conclusion, this deadly form of tourism should prioritise safety and ensure zero risk of fatalities. Extreme tourism that poses a possibility of injury or death should be banned for the sake of humanity.

Richard Garriott, president of the Explorers Club, rightly said, "While we should all appreciate efforts to innovate and push the boundaries of exploration, this must be done safely and sensibly.”

extreme tourism article

#ExtremeTourism #TitanSubmersible #ShockTourism #SocialIssues #RiskVsReward

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Jasmin Paris Becomes First Woman to Complete Extreme Barkley Race

The Barkley Marathons, which features cryptic rules for entry, requires runners to complete 100 miles of rugged terrain in Tennessee in under 60 hours.

Jasmin Paris in a red shirt rests against a stone wall. A yellow gate is in the foreground.

By Emmett Lindner

The runner Jasmin Paris became on Friday the first woman to complete the Barkley Marathons, an extreme footrace that requires participants in rural Tennessee to navigate 100 miles of rugged terrain in no more than 60 hours.

Paris, 40, of Midlothian, Scotland, finished the race with one minute and 39 seconds to spare, making her one of only 20 people to complete the Barkley since it was extended to 100 miles in 1989. She was one of five to finish this year, out of 40 entrants.

At the end of the run, Paris sank to the ground in front of a yellow gate that marks the start and finish of the event, which consists of five roughly 20-mile laps.

“The final minutes were so intense, after all that effort it came down to a sprint uphill, with every fiber of my body screaming at me to stop,” Paris said in an email.

Her legs were covered in cuts and scratches by the time she reached the end of the race, which was the subject of a 2014 documentary, “ The Race That Eats Its Young .”

“I didn’t even know if I’d made it when I touched the gate,” she added. “I just gave it everything to get there and then collapsed, gasping for air.”

She attempted the race in 2022 and 2023 and became the first woman to reach the fourth lap since 2001. Though she didn’t complete the event in those years, she said that she felt more confident and experienced going into the race on Friday.

In 2019, Ms. Paris, an ultrarunner and veterinarian, became the first woman to win the Montane Spine Race, a 268-mile ultramarathon in the United Kingdom. She broke the previous course record by 12 hours despite stopping at checkpoints to pump breast milk for her newborn.

The Barkley began in 1986, after its founder, Gary Cantrell , learned about the prison escape of James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ray fled for eight miles over the course of 54 hours through the Tennessee wilderness. Cantrell thought he could fare better himself, and he began to map out routes inside Frozen Head State Park.

The prison has been along the race route, which can change every year and requires athletes to often run through pathless terrain.

The rules for entering the race are cryptic. The Barkley doesn’t advertise. It asks applicants to submit an essay explaining why they wish to compete, in addition to a $1.60 entry fee.

“There is no website, and I don’t publish the race date or explain how to enter,” Mr. Cantrell said in a 2013 interview with The New York Times.

“Anything that makes it more mentally stressful for the runners is good,” he added.

Nothing about the marathon, which also boasts the equivalent of 60,000 feet of ascent and descent, about twice the elevation of Mount Everest, is straightforward.

On the night before the event, runners must stay alert for the sound of a conch shell that signals one hour until the race begins. When they take their marks, Cantrell signifies the start of the race by lighting a ceremonial cigarette.

As the race advances, runners must find books that are scattered along the course and remove a page that corresponds to their assigned number to prove their progress.

They hand the page from each book to Mr. Cantrell, as they complete each lap. There are no path markers, and runners have to memorize the course before they begin.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Barkley,” Ms. Paris said, “it’s that you never know what you are capable of until you try.”

Emmett Lindner writes about breaking and trending news. He has written about international protests, climate change and social media influencers. More about Emmett Lindner

Inside the World of Sports

Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping professional, collegiate and amateur athletics..

No More  Cinderella Stories?: Expansion of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament has been a popular topic. But adding more teams could push small schools like Oakland, which upset Kentucky, out of the action .

Caitlin Clark’s Lasting Impact: People have flocked to watch the Iowa basketball star  on TV and in person. But will her effect on the popularity and economics of women’s sports linger after her college career ends ?

Gambling Poses Risks for Leagues:   The situation involving the former interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger and pitcher, shows that when it comes to wagering on games, professional leagues have more than just the players to watch .

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DeSantis tourism board, Disney reach settlement to end legal feud

The board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee Disney’s former special taxing district agreed Wednesday to a settlement with the entertainment giant, capping a legal feud over who should control development at the sprawling theme park complex.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, made up of DeSantis appointees, agreed to drop its lawsuit against the company in exchange for Disney relinquishing some control over its 25,000-acre property. Disney will also drop a lawsuit of its own over public records from the district.

Both sides on Wednesday made statements indicating they’re ready to move on from the political battle that started in 2022, when Disney’s former CEO criticized a DeSantis-backed law that critics dubbed “don’t say gay.”

Disney is still appealing a federal lawsuit dismissed in January that alleges DeSantis violated the company’s First Amendment rights but has agreed to hit pause for now. The future of that case hinges on “pending negotiations” between the company and the district over new development, according to the settlement.

“This is a political victory for Gov. DeSantis,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. “It seems like the white flag of surrender has been raised over Cinderella’s castle.”

The feud between the governor and Disney started over one of DeSantis’ most high-profile pieces of legislation, the Parental Rights in Education bill. Disney’s chief executive at the time, Bob Chapek, came out in opposition to the legislation, which prohibited instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade.

The bill’s vague language led some teachers to pull LGBTQ-related books from library shelves and dismantle pride-related activities and organizations. A recent settlement over the legislation, which has now been expanded to all grade levels, clarified that the restrictions only apply to classroom instruction.

In response to Disney’s opposition to the bill, DeSantis pushed for legislation dismantling the Reedy Creek tax district, which for decades has managed the expansive property that encompasses Walt Disney World in central Florida. Opponents of the governor saw it as a retaliatory power grab. Supporters said it was a needed measure to address inequities that gave Disney a privilege over other theme park companies.

Disney later filed a lawsuit alleging DeSantis was punishing the company for exercising its right to free speech, threatening its business operations, jeopardizing its economic future in the region and violating its constitutional rights.

Meanwhile, the new Disney World oversight board installed by DeSantis accused its predecessor of using an 11th-hour agreement to sharply curtail the board’s powers and bolster the company’s control over the amusement park property.

The DeSantis-appointed board criticized those actions, which granted Disney broad veto powers over any improvements or changes to properties at its theme park and included a “royal lives” clause that made it valid in perpetuity.

The board sued in state court, and Wednesday’s settlement declares that actions taken by the former Reedy Creek special taxing district days before it was taken over by DeSantis appointees would be “null and void.” That included a long-lasting development agreement that would have greatly limited what the new board could do.

Both sides praised the settlement as an opportunity to turn a page.

“This agreement opens a new chapter of constructive engagement with the new leadership of the district and serves the interests of all parties by enabling significant continued investment and the creation of thousands of direct and indirect jobs and economic opportunity in the State,” Jeff Vahle, president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a statement.

Charles Barakat, chairman of the tourism board, said he was “very much pleased” with the settlement.

“I’m certainly eager to work with Disney, and all the businesses, to make the country’s tourism destination famous for a second reason, which is good governance,” he said.

The political battle has nonetheless had a political and economic fallout. Disney has become more selective regarding its investments in Florida. Disney chief executive Bob Iger has hinted that corporate investments in the state could be in jeopardy.

“Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?” Iger said in a call with investors last year.

Disney canceled a planned development at Lake Nona Town Center in Orange County in May, citing “new leadership and changing business conditions.” The company also pulled the plug on an immersive Star Wars-themed Orlando hotel less than two years after it was opened. Spokespeople for DeSantis have said the canceled investment at Lake Nona had more to do with business failures on the part of Disney.

But the company has also said it has big plans for future development, and that will require cooperation with the tourism district, which oversees infrastructure, taxes, and other municipal services for the theme park property.

The business segment that includes Disney theme parks has seen its revenue grow steadily from $23.5 billion in fiscal year 2017, up to $28.7 billion in fiscal year 2022. For the final three months of 2023, Disney saw its profit from domestic theme parks decline by about 2 percent.

The company said it saw lower attendance than at the end of 2022, when foot traffic was boosted by a 50-year anniversary celebration that year. In September, the company announced plans to nearly double the amount of capital it devotes to theme parks and cruises, through a $60 billion, 10-year investment plan. It touted more than a thousand acres of land for possible future expansion, pointing to its U.S. theme parks in Orlando and Anaheim, as well as parks in Paris and Tokyo.

Disney’s stock price is up about 28 percent since the beginning of 2023.

Jewett said that recent changes at the district may have helped convince Disney that the DeSantis board was more willing to work with the company. The district has a new chairman who replaced Martin Garcia, who was sharply critical of Disney, calling them “naughty,” among other things.

It also has a new administrator, Stephanie Kopelousos, a DeSantis adviser who is experienced in local government. Kopelousos also worked to get Disney a carve-out from a “Big Tech” social media bill the governor signed in 2021.

“She has a reputation for being very competent with the nuts and bolts and getting things done,” Jewett said. “I think she’s somebody Disney feels they can work with.”

The settlement did not include an admission of liability from either side, nor did it include any money changing hands. The board relinquished control of several permits “as a material inducement” to Disney, according to a copy of the settlement agreement.

The DeSantis administration celebrated the settlement.

“Moving forward, we stand ready to work with Disney and the District to help promote economic growth, family-friendly tourism, and accountable government in Central Florida,” DeSantis communications director Bryan Griffin said in a statement.

extreme tourism article

You can book luxury hotels, cruises, and vacation packages through Costco for a fraction of the cost

  • Costco offers steep discounts on hotels, cruises, rental cars, and vacation packages for members.
  • Travel can be booked through the Costco Travel website.
  • Costco offers perks like waived fees for additional drivers on rental cars.

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If you're a Costco member, you can also book hotels, cruises, rental cars, and all-inclusive packages online through Costco Travel .

The Costco Travel website offers vacation packages at luxury resorts in destinations like Tahiti, Costa Rica, Cancún, and Hawaii, and cruises with companies such as Carnival, Royal Caribbean , and Princess, at heavily discounted prices.

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For example, a Costco Travel vacation package at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa in Maui offers five nights for the price of four and includes the flight, rental car, a room with a partial ocean view, and the hotel's daily breakfast buffet.

The entire vacation package costs $4,851.45 when booked through Costco Travel. When booking the same room and dates directly through the Hyatt Regency's website, just the hotel reservation costs $5,331.78 — a price that doesn't even include airfare to Maui or a rental car.

For smaller-scale trips, renting a car through Costco comes with a major perk: additional driver fees are waived when booking through Alamo, Enterprise, Budget, or Avis, according to Costco Travel's rental car FAQs .

To book a journey, members need to make a profile on Costco Travel's website separate from the one they use to shop for other items.

Booking trips through any third-party website is inherently a bit riskier than booking directly. If any unforeseen circumstances come up, it can be difficult to make changes or receive refunds.

Still, Costco memberships start at $60 a year — a small price to pay for huge travel savings.

Plus, if you pay with the Costco Anywhere Visa card , you'll earn 3% cash back on purchases through Costco Travel.

extreme tourism article

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COMMENTS

  1. Extreme tourism: 'If it was safe, that's not an adventure'

    Yet one of the odd things about extreme tourism is that risk seems to attract rather than deter customers. Just two days after a volcano erupted on White Island off New Zealand in 2019, killing 22 ...

  2. Why Extreme Tourism is Booming Despite the Dangers

    In 2021, the global adventure tourism market was valued at $282.1 billion, according to a report by Grand View Research. It's now projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.2 ...

  3. Inside the World's Rarest Experiences: Why the Rich Love Extreme Tourism

    Grand View Research reports that the extreme tourism industry was worth $322 billion in 2022 but is on pace to top $1 trillion in 2030. Much of the enthusiasm comes from COVID itself.

  4. The Wild World of Extreme Tourism for Billionaires

    The extreme tourism industry is niche, but growing. A swelling number of companies have emerged to facilitate dangerous adventures for the super-rich. OceanGate began offering trips aboard Titan ...

  5. Why is extreme 'frontier travel' booming despite the risks?

    Frontier tourism is an exclusive and extreme form of adventure travel. The trips are very expensive, aim to overstimulate the senses and go to the outer limits of our planet - the deep oceans ...

  6. Extreme travel: It just got harder to see every place in the world

    Extreme travel isn't for the faint-hearted. Kari-Matti Valtari would know. He has been arrested many times and held in detention in war-torn nations, but has seen everywhere from St Eustatius to ...

  7. From Titanic tours to space exploration: extreme tourism is ...

    The $250,000-a-head expedition that vanished this week en route to the deep-sea wreck of the Titanic ocean liner is just one example of extreme tourism that is becoming more commonplace for those ...

  8. Danger, prestige and authenticity draw thrill-seekers to adventure tourism

    Technology can often make the extreme environments of adventure tourism more safe, but at the bottom of the ocean, the vacuum of space or the cold of a mountain summit the consequences of failure ...

  9. The Titanic Sub and the Draw of Extreme Tourism

    June 20, 2023. The submersible craft's journey to the bottom of the ocean and back was supposed to take about eight hours. Two and a half hours for the descent, a few hours to explore the ...

  10. Extreme tourism

    Extreme tourism (also often referred to as danger tourism or shock tourism, although these concepts do not appear strictly similar) is a niche in the tourism industry involving travel to dangerous places ( mountains, jungles, deserts, caves, canyons, etc.) or participation in dangerous events. Extreme tourism overlaps with extreme sport.

  11. From Titanic Tours to Scaling Everest, Extreme Tourism Is a Big

    Extreme adventures send travelers to the ends of the earth, the bottom of the sea and even to space. Despite the risks and costs that can regularly total over $100,000, the business is booming ...

  12. The rise of extreme tourism

    The rise of extreme tourism. Adventurers around the world are shelling out big bucks to travel to remote — and often dangerous — parts of the Earth. The big picture: Several factors, including new technologies and post-pandemic demand, are driving a surge in extreme tourism. The world's wealthiest thrill-seekers are pushing tourism to its ...

  13. Extreme Tourism Is a Booming Industry for the Rich, But Is It Ethical

    09/15/2023. In June, the world was gripped by the disappearance of a deep-sea submersible that was taking paying customers—essentially, tourists—more than 2 miles deep into the ocean to visit the Titanic wreck site. The customers aboard the OceanGate vessel Titan were seeking the adventure of a lifetime, and they had paid handsomely for it.

  14. The 'extreme tourism' industry is costly and there are risks

    By Spencer Buell Globe Staff,Updated June 26, 2023, 8:55 a.m. High stakes, big checks: the rise of extreme tourism. 6:41. Reporter Spencer Buell explains the rise of extreme tourism for the super ...

  15. Why is extreme 'frontier travel' booming despite the risks?

    Frontier tourism is an exclusive and extreme form of adventure travel. The trips are very expensive, aim to overstimulate the senses and go to the outer limits of our planet—the deep oceans ...

  16. The most extreme adventures on Earth

    Death Valley (USA): Visiting Death Valley National Park in California is unlike any walk in any other park. Death Valley holds the record as the hottest place on Earth. RHONA WISE/AFP/AFP/Getty ...

  17. A Failed Trip to the Titanic Displays the Dangers of Extreme Tourism

    1. Amy Laskowski. What was supposed to be an eight-hour trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic is now looking like a largely avoidable tragedy. The harrowing search for the Titan ended Thursday, as the US Coast Guard announced they found evidence that the submersible vessel had probably imploded and all five passengers were believed to be dead.

  18. Extreme Tourism—Trips That Go Way Beyond The Comfort Zone

    Interest in extreme tourism continues to grow, says Brown. "Based on the increased number of clients retaining our services it certainly seems like there's an upward trend," he says.

  19. 6 extreme tourist attractions in the USA

    Mount Washington State Park, 1598 Mount Washington Auto Road, Sargent's Purchase, New Hampshire; +1 603 466 3347. Jordan Rane writes regularly for CNN Travel and The Los Angeles Times. His work ...

  20. Full article: The paradox of tourism extremes. Excesses and restraints

    As argued in this paper, both overtourism and undertourism, including the current COVID-19 pandemic, are the result of underlying issues of the current tourism political economy, which increasingly results in paradoxical tourism extremes of too much or too little tourism. As the world has gone from a situation of saturation to one of scarcity ...

  21. The Deadly Delight of Extreme Tourism: Balancing Thrills, Risks, and

    On 18th June 2023, tragedy struck when the Titan submersible imploded, leading to the death of five people on board an expedition to witness the remains of the Titanic shipwreck. Despite the risks and dangers involved, extreme tourism is gaining popularity day by day. Extreme tourism, also known as shock tourism, is a form of travel that is ...

  22. Iceland's Tourism Suffers Amid a Belching Volcano and Flowing Lava

    That paradox, many say, is at the heart of Iceland's identity as an adventure travel destination where tourists seek out untamed nature in the form of waterfalls, glaciers and hot springs. And ...

  23. Extreme Tourism As a New Direction

    Read online. Extreme tourism is a rapidly developing sphere in tourism. Its aim is sports development, outdoor activities, camping. Extreme tourism includes a lot of extreme sports, all of its attendant risks. However, there are problems in the development of this new direction, the solution of which will benefit the development of tourism as a ...

  24. (PDF) Extreme Tourism

    PDF | On Mar 7, 2017, Felicity Picken published Extreme Tourism | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

  25. Jasmin Paris Becomes First Woman to Complete Extreme Barkley Race

    The runner Jasmin Paris became on Friday the first woman to complete the Barkley Marathons, an extreme footrace that requires participants in rural Tennessee to navigate 100 miles of rugged ...

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    On many weekends, dozens of people line up in a nondescript alleyway in east London to shop at sample sales: designer clothing offered at discounts that typically stretch to 70% or more.

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    Some changes (such as droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists previously assessed. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the United Nations body established to assess the science related to climate change — modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global climate, and some of these changes ...

  28. DeSantis tourism board, Disney reach settlement to end legal feud

    The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, made up of DeSantis appointees, agreed to drop its lawsuit against the company in exchange for Disney relinquishing some control over its 25,000 ...

  29. How to Book Luxury Vacations Through Costco

    For example, a Costco Travel vacation package at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa in Maui offers five nights for the price of four and includes the flight, rental car, a room with a partial ...

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