Explorers of a Different Kind: A History of Antarctic Tourism 1966-2016

Abstract

In 1966, American tour operator, Lindblad Travel, began small-scale tourist cruises to Antarctica. Over the course of the next 50 years, what began as an offbeat travel destination transformed into an iconic tourist attraction. Annual tourist visits to Antarctica grew from a few hundred to tens of thousands; modes of transport to the continent diversified to include yachts, cruise ships, icebreakers and aircraft; and the activities available to Antarctic tourists ranged from one-day scenic flights to multi-month mountaineering expeditions and ski tours to the South Pole. Antarctic tourism numbers trebled in the 1990s, with an influx of Russian ice ships into the tourism fleet.

This thesis chronicles that 50-year history of Antarctic tourism growth and diversification. Its narrative centres on the efforts of enterprising tour operators to secure their footing on a physically and politically formidable continent. Government officials and a mounting environmental movement invariably resisted these efforts. And the safety, environmental integrity and self-sufficiency of the industry were challenged in the wake of a series of environmental emergencies. Even so, Antarctic tour operators were successful in forging a robust industry through technical ingenuity and political nous. By underscoring their environmental ethos, and their influential role in raising public awareness of Antarctica, tour operators presented themselves as the responsible stewards of an innocuous practice that was consistent with Antarctica’s governing principles.

Each chapter in this 50-year tourism history also offers some insight into the Antarctic tourist imaginary, a theme that is explored further through a series of reflections. These reflections reveal that the Antarctic tourism industry draws strongly on the dominant image of Antarctica as a pristine wilderness, frozen in a perpetual age of heroic exploration. By suppressing its own history, the Antarctic tourism industry strives to maintain a perception of the continent as an enduring blank space available for perpetual discovery. According to this image, the heroic age explorers remain the touchstone of Antarctic experience even now, more than a century after the era’s conclusion. The explorers’ narratives of physical and moral struggle against a relentless environment continue to serve as the benchmark of authentic Antarctic experience. They also inspire the sustained imagining of Antarctica as a masculine sphere for ‘Boys’ Own’ adventure, a legacy most poignantly illuminated in the endeavours of Antarctica’s modern explorers.

Such an imagining of Antarctica as pristine and untouched—as a continent apart—is challenged by more recent understandings of Antarctic ice. We have come to realise that the world’s sea level is principally controlled by the state of the Antarctic ice sheet and that we may be destabilising that ice sheet without ever leaving home. These emerging climate change narratives threaten to undermine dominant images of Antarctica as an untouched wilderness frozen in time. For now, tour operators continue to present climate change narratives in a manner which does not fundamentally challenge this wilderness ideal; an ideal which forms the imaginative foundation on which the Antarctic tourism industry has been built.