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The world has watched in shock as rescue crews feverishly search for the Titan submersible vehicle [the fatalities were confirmed overnight following the discovery of wreckage], 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. Travellers 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 travellers 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 publicises 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 travellers 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 travellers 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.

Anne Hardy is associate professor of tourism and society at the University of Tasmania, Can Seng Ooi is a professor at the University of Tasmania, Hanne E.F. Nielsen is a senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania, and Joseph M. Cheer is professor of sustainable tourism and heritage and co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Sustainable Tourism at Western Sydney University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AJ Hackett Bungy New Zealand has launched the restart of Queenstown tourism with mayor Jim Boult taking a dawn leap off Kawarau Bridge.

Boult and Bungy NZ co-founder Henry van Asch were among the jumpers this morning marking New Zealand’s move to Covid-19 alert level 2.

Bungy NZ has also opened its Auckland Harbour Bridge, Sky Tower and Taupō sites this morning, joining dozens of operators across the country restarting business following the seven-week lockdown.

“It’s wonderful to see so many businesses in our area opening back up,” said Boult.

“Though these are tough times for all businesses across the district, we’re embracing alert level 2 and the cautious reopening that it is allowing. We are still the country’s premier visitor destination, with a recent poll showing Queenstown as the number one tourist destination for New Zealanders, closely followed by Wānaka at number five.”

Van Asch said the reopening of the Kawarau Bungy site was a positive step and deserved acknowledgement.

“We’re very realistic about the long, tough road ahead but we thought it was important to mark the occasion with, literally, a big leap forward,” he said.

“With no clear idea of when the international market might return, we still have a long way to go as we work towards long-term sustainability for our business and re-sizing is inevitable. But we’re thinking and looking forward to what Bungy and Queenstown can be into the future.”

Bungy NZ’s the Ledge at Queenstown would reopen with the restart of Skyline Gondola on Saturday. Bungy NZ had also launched a new product this week – the Bungy Avatar – which gave customers an online taste of a jump at the Ledge.

“While it’s not like doing a Bungy for yourself, it offers people the opportunity to get a taste of Queenstown and the kind of warm welcome they’ll receive here,” said van Asch.

Bungy NZ was also offering $88 jumps from Kawarau Bridge, the Ledge, Taupō and Auckland to mark the company’s first year of operation, 1988.

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Waiheke Island operator EcoZip Adventures is set to expand to the South Island having successfully secured a site in Kaikoura, five years after it first starting scoping out the destination.

Co-founders Gavin Oliver and Chris Holister have been granted resource consent to develop a new adventure tourism operation on an 11,000-hectare piece of private land 9km south of the popular destination for which they have secured a 50-year lease.

The partners are privately funding the expansion, and are planning for the new product to open in October 2020.

The move comes five years after the business first looked to secure a concession for a Kaikoura site on Department of Conservation land at Mt Fyffe in 2014. That application was subsequently withdrawn, and the partners opted to go down the private-land route.

Oliver said they intend to build a series of ziplines, totalling more than 2km in length, on what is a working cattle and sheep station. The experience will also see visitors ford a braided river in specialist 4×4 vehicles before climbing to 250m for a guided walk through native forest.

It is expected to create up to 30 jobs with preference given to locals, according to Oliver.

The October 2020 opening aligns with other significant in the seaside location, including the opening of Sudima’s $20m hotel and Kiwirail’s planned upgrade of its Coastal Pacific upgrades which includes an overhaul of Kaikoura’s train station.

EcoZip, which started operating in 2012, said that its conservation ethos will be replicated at the new site, starting with a native tree planting programme designed to rehabilitate former farmland alongside the introduction of a pest eradication plan.

Oliver said that there are multiple synergies between his business and the town where the Regional Tourism Organisation, Destination Kaikoura, recorded spend of $119m in the year to October according to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates.

He said: “Kaikoura has established a well-deserved reputation as New Zealand’s premier sustainable and environmental tourism hub. As a conservation focused product we believe EcoZip will be a natural fit.”

Collaboration is another major focus for the business, according to Oliver, who added: “The Kaikoura area boasts some outstanding operators who we’re looking forward to working with to jointly develop more reasons for visitors to add Kaikoura to their itineraries.”

Kaikoura’s deputy mayor and chair of Destination Kaikoura, Julie Howden, said: “The arrival of a land-based, conservation-focused, product will strengthen the Kaikoura tourism proposition, fitting with the town’s desire to develop reasons for visitors to stay longer, do more and engage further with the town’s businesses.”

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O’Sullivan, the former boss of Tourism Australia, told the Ticker that despite launching a review of all of the Australian-listed operator’s businesses, its New Zealand skydive operations played a vital role within the adventure tourism group.

John O’Sullivan

“New Zealand has been, will be, and is a really key part of our business,” said O’Sullivan, who joined Experience Co in July after leading Tourism Australia since 2014.

“We’ve got a great team over in New Zealand, led by Clark Scott. Scotty has done an amazing job with our business in our three drop zones out of Queenstown, Wanaka and Glenorchy. It’s also the business that I entrusted out of our group to have my first ever skydive with – that’s how much I trust them.”

The strategic review could see the Wollongong-based group, which has been on a buying spree of tourism businesses over the past few years, sell recent acquisitions to help turn around losses from slowing tourism and unseasonal weather.

New Zealand’s pedigree and experience in adventure tourism fit perfectly with Experience Co’s core proposition and meant it would remain “a really key part of our narrative”, said O’Sullivan.

“We are actively looking at possible acquisitions as well as greenfield opportunities in that market. We’ve got a number of sites that we are looking at both in the North and South Island. I can’t reveal too much to your readers, but Scotty is actively looking at different options for us.”

Experience Co, formerly known as Skydive the Beach, bought Queenstown and Glenorchy skydive company NZONE for $17m in 2015 and Skydive Wanaka in 2016 for $10.4m. It also purchased Performance Aviation Limited, an aircraft and helicopter maintenance business based in Wanaka for $500,000, and has bought land at Pukaki Airport near Twizel for a new Mackenzie jump site.

“New Zealand has been a core part of our expansion, and it’s been done very successfully,” said O’Sullivan.

“I can’t preclude what’s going to be in the strategic review but New Zealand has been a key part of our success over the last few years. It has done well and we believe the market is there for it to continue to do so.

“We’ve got great locations in the Queenstown district, which gives us a position of strength in that market. And I know from my time at Tourism Australia that Queenstown is a renown destination for adventure and so is New Zealand. From our point of view, it’s a no brainer.”

The findings of the strategic review, which was launched before the group announced in its FY19 results a A$62.2m write-down of its Australian adventure business, would be presented at Experience Co’s annual general meeting this week. The company suffered a statutory net loss after tax of A$48.3m for the year to June 2019.

“For me, the key thing is having a strategy about where you go next,” said O’Sullivan.

“I think one of the things that we didn’t do well is that there are some of our businesses that we expanded into for expansion’s sake.

“From my perspective, no acquisition should ever be ruled out when it presents itself but you need to be very clear about what fits within your portfolio and what doesn’t. And that’s the key part of the strategic review; it’s about simplifying the business and having a better understanding of where we go to next.”

Although inbound tourism growth was slowing in New Zealand, O’Sullivan was confident the sector would bounce back.

“We see fundamentally inbound tourism into New Zealand as being strong. Yes, growth has slowed but that’s a trend happening globally right now, it’s not just confined to New Zealand,” he said.

However, Experience Co’s skydiving business was doing relatively well because it attracted an independent, more robust part of the market, said O’Sullivan.

“For example, even though Chinese visitation into New Zealand is down at the moment, our [Chinese skydive] numbers are increasing by about 9%, so we get a part of that market that’s not really affected by the broader trends within that market,” he said.

“For us, that is one of the strengths of our model. We’re not necessarily looking for sheer volume, we’re looking for the right sort of customer, that high-value customer, which New Zealand will always appeal to.

“We agree with Tourism New Zealand in that there are some headwinds for international tourism into New Zealand and we are monitoring our activity to make sure our business rides through that. But the industry is cyclical, it will bounce back and New Zealand is fundamentally just such a great destination – one, which when I was running Tourism Australia, I used to look on with great envy.”

In tomorrow’s Ticker, John O’Sullivan talks about his time leading Tourism Australia and how he viewed Tourism New Zealand’s work on the international stage and the evolution of the 100% Pure New Zealand brand.

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Zipliners at Christchurch Adventure Park. Image: ChristchurchNZ

Canterbury has made National Geographic Travel’s Best Trips list being selected as one of the world’s top destinations to explore in 2019.

The South Island region was listed alongside destinations as diverse as Greenland, Oman and Macedonia in the ‘adventure’ category in the annual Best Trips issue of Nat Geo’s Traveler magazine.

The region is home a number of award-winning tourism and adventure experiences including Whale Watch Kaikoura, swimming with the dolphins in Akaroa, the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, and a number of mountain biking, ziplining, kayaking, canyoning, rafting and jet boating operations.

ChristchurchNZ’s general manager – Destination and Attraction, Loren Heaphy, said: “Making the list of such a highly regarded travel magazine is fantastic news for the city and region.

“Christchurch is a logical place for visitors to base themselves while they explore all the amazing adventure activities on offer around the region and we know many Traveler magazine readers will be inspired to put Canterbury on the top of their travel list after seeing us featured.”

Tourism New Zealand chief executive Stephen England-Hall added: “Canterbury has a lot to offer visitors, it’s great to see the region being recognised by such a highly regarded publication.

“Tourism New Zealand seeks to spread the benefits of tourism across the country by heavily promoting the regions in our work. International exposure through this accolade will help encourage more visitors to the Canterbury region and the rest of the South Island.”

National Geographic Traveler editor in chief George Stone says the Best Trips issue features 28 destinations and experiences that “can inspire us, change our perspectives and connect us with cultures, places and ideas that matter in the world”.

“The issue is packed with spectacular National Geographic photography and is driven by our mission to explore, conserve, respect and engage with our planet.”

National Geographic’s Best Trips destinations for 2019 are:

Adventure

• Greenland
• Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico
• Isla de los Estados, Argentina
• Macedonia
• Canterbury Region, New Zealand
• Caño Cristales River, Colombia
• Oman

Cities

• Dakar, Senegal
• Salvador, Brazil
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Toronto, Canada
• Matera, Italy
• Perth, Australia
• Mexico City, Mexico

Nature

• Peruvian Amazon
• Montenegro
• Belize
• Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique
• South Walton County, Florida
• Fanjingshan, China
• Tahiti, French Polynesia

Culture

• Cairo, Egypt
• Hoang Lien Son, Vietnam
• Galway, Ireland
• Bauhaus Trail, Germany
• Oakland, California
• Vervey, Switzerland
• Dordogne, France

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