Contemporary Geographies of Antarctic Tourism
Call for Papers: Special Issue in Tourism Geographies
Popularly conceived as an untouched, icy wilderness, Antarctica is also the site of a thriving tourist industry. Now well over fifty years in operation, the Antarctic tourism industry has long been on a growth trajectory, with the post-pandemic period producing a particularly rapid increase in numbers. New vessels coming into operation – combined perhaps with the appeal of a vast, open and remote continent in the wake of years of lockdowns – have made Antarctica a relatively sought-after destination. Visitors to the continent over the 2022-23 summer season will top 100,000 (IAATO 2022) – a 40% increase on the highest pre-COVID numbers – and there are strong signs that the upward trend will continue. Although spatiotemporally highly concentrated at present, this rapid growth poses a serious potential threat to the continent’s icescape and its wildlife at a time when it is already under assault from anthropogenic warming and shifting climate.
The growth and diversification of Antarctic tourism is the source of several environmental, cultural, and governance challenges. With these challenges, however, come opportunities. Tourism in Antarctica is more closely mediated than perhaps anywhere else in the world; apart from a handful of yacht travelers and adventurers, tourists do not encounter the continent independently. Almost all tourists travel with an operator and over 98% travel on a cruise ship, visiting selected sites in the Antarctic Peninsula region (IAATO 2022). These tourists experience the continent in a carefully curated way, with onboard lectures and activities as well as guided excursions framing their encounters with the environment. What are the possibilities to use this mediation as a way to increase visitors’ knowledge of and care for the region and the planet? How can operators create a journey to Antarctica which opens tourists’ minds to the richness of its natural environment, history of human interaction, and role in global climate systems, rather than simply reinforcing stereotypes of visual spectacle, charismatic wildlife, and heroic explorers?
The Antarctic tourism industry argues that first-hand experience of the continent turns travelers into champions for the region (IAATO 2019), although the empirical evidence for this is equivocal at best (Bauer 2001; Powell, Kellert and Ham 2008; Eijgelaar, Thaper and Peters 2010; Vila et al 2016). While it is easy to be cynical about ‘Antarctic Ambassadorship’ as a marketing ploy, we might better ask what opportunities exist to deliberately design Antarctic journeys that do make a difference, and who should be involved in this design. For example, alongside the role of tour operators and their collaborative efforts, there is an important role for gateway cities and (air)ports, the scientific community, expedition guides and crew.
National and cultural diversification also creates significant opportunities for a wider range of people to experience Antarctica first-hand and learn about its natural and human histories. Preliminary research focussed on Chinese visitors, however, suggests that Western expedition staff’s delivery of the Antarctic tourist experience neglects important points of connection, concluding that “understanding cultural diversity in the Antarctic experience would bring better advocacy for conservation as well as ecosystem health of Antarctica” (Cheung, Bauer and Deng 2019, 207–208). What can research bring to this process of cultural awareness in Antarctic tourism and to the role of the encounter?
Governing tourism activities is challenging in a region where human activity is regulated not by one sovereign state but rather a collection of states, through an international treaty. The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), which applies to the area South of 60 degrees Latitude and currently has fifty-five signatories, governs all activities in the region, including tourism, in the interests of science, peace and environmental protection. The Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty in particular provides stipulations and requirements for undertaking tourism activities in the Antarctic region, including environmental impact assessments and permitting through Antarctic Treaty member states; reporting; safety requirements; and guidelines. Implementing existing agreements and developing additional policies to address tourism growth, diversification and impact is challenging and slow due to the mechanics of consensus-based decision making within Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) (Molenaar, 2021; Verbitsky, 2013). Alongside the ATS, and perhaps due to the challenges of state regulation, self-regulation under the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) is considered an important governance mechanism for ensuring safe and sustainable tourism activities in Antarctica. IAATO has developed and promotes a range of industry guidelines (Haase et al., 2009), but membership is not compulsory and the association is not in a position to enforce operational restrictions on its members. What could novel ways of governing and organising tourism look like? To what extent can the Antarctic be conceived as a global commons? And what is Antarctic tourism’s geopolitical role?
Like the industry itself, polar tourism scholarship has been increasing over the last two decades, with considerable attention from an interconnected group of highly active researchers primarily within Arctic and Antarctic studies, and a strong focus on development and management (Stewart, Liggett and Dawson, 2017). Mainstream tourism research, however, has tended to ignore the far north and far south. In nearly 25 years of its existence, Tourism Geographies has published no articles dealing even partially with Antarctic tourism and only a handful focussed on the Arctic (e.g. Tervo-Kankare, Kaján and Saarinen 2018; Kerr and Stewart 2021; Kaján 2014; Cooper 2022). In an era of climate change and growing anthropogenic impact on all corners of the planet, however, these erstwhile marginal regions are moving toward the centre of consciousness and geopolitical actions, as their melting glaciers and destabilising ice sheets threaten to raise sea levels and inundate low-lying areas. Polar tourism is no longer a topic of niche interest, but one that should be central to tourism research.
This special issue asks researchers to look to the south: to better understand the contemporary tourism geographies of the Antarctic and to address tourism challenges and opportunities, past, present and future. We welcome contributions from across the sciences (natural/social) and humanities, including theoretical, conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, historical and textual analyses. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
Guest Editors
Associate Professor Anne Hardy works in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She has a keen interest in tourist behaviour and sustainable tourism. Among Anne’s best-known research projects is the multiple award-winning Tourism Tracer. This project was the first to track tourists, with their consent, for the duration of their holiday throughout entire destinations. Anne is currently part of an Australian Research Council funded project focussed on tourist experience in Antarctica.
Professor Edward H. Huijbens is a geographer, graduate of Durham University in England and chair of Wageningen University’s research group in cultural geography. Before assuming this post in 2019 he ran the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre (2006-2015) and later worked as a scholar of tourism, professor and head of department at the school of social sciences and humanities at the University of Akureyri, Iceland (2015-2019). Edward works on tourism theory, issues of regional development, landscape perceptions, the role of transport in tourism and polar tourism. He is author of over 40 articles in several scholarly journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Geographies and has published four monographs in both Iceland and internationally and co-edited four books.
Associate Professor Machiel Lamers is based at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He earned his PhD in 2009 at Maastricht University (NL) on the sustainability challenges of tourism development and governance in Antarctica. His research interests are in the fields of tourism and environmental governance, marine tourism and nature conservation, mobile marine sectors and environmental information systems. Machiel has been leading several international research projects on the sustainability and governance implications of cruise tourism in the Arctic and Antarctic region, including the SALIENSEAS project and the ANTARC-SHIP project, a PT-REPAIR project funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). He has been a co-chair of the Polar Prediction Project’s Social and Economic Research Applications committee (PPP-SERA); a current focal programme of the WMO.
Professor Elizabeth Leane is based in the School of Humanities, within the College of Arts, Law and Education, at the University of Tasmania. Her work examines cultural responses to Antarctica past and present, with a recent focus on polar travel and tourism cultures, national Antarctic imaginaries, and ‘gateway’ cities. She is the author or editor of seven books, including Antarctica in Fiction, South Pole: Nature and Culture, Performing Ice and Anthropocene Antarctica. She is currently lead investigator of the Australian Research Council funded project ‘Transforming Tourists’ Antarctic Experience.’
Postdoctoral Researcher Alix Varnajot is based at the Geography Research Unit, within the University of Oulu, Finland. He earned his PhD in Human Geography from the University of Oulu in 2020. His PhD dissertation explored conceptual and theoretical developments in Arctic tourism. His research interests encompass tourism at borders, tourists’ performances, as well as the regulation of tourism in the Polar regions. His most recent work has focused on the implications of global warming and a thawing cryosphere to the future of Polar tourism, as well as extreme citizen science in contemporary Polar exploration.
Author Instructions
Special Issue Timeline
References
Bauer, T 2001. Tourism in the Antarctic: Opportunities, Constraints and Future Prospects. New York: Haworth Hospitality.
Cheung, W, T Bauer & J Deng 2019. “The Growth of Chinese Tourism to Antarctica: A Profile of their Connectedness to Nature, Motivations, and Perceptions”, The Polar Journal 9(1): 197–213.
Cooper, E 2022. “Making Sense of Sustainable Tourism on the Periphery: Perspectives from Greenland”, Tourist Geographies https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2022.2152955
Eijgelaar, E, C Thaper & P Peters 2010. “Antarctic Cruise Tourism: The Paradoxes of Ambassadorship, ‘Last Chance Tourism’ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, Journal of Sustainable Tourism 18(3): 337–354.
Haase, D, M Lamers & B Amelung 2009. “Heading into Uncharted Territory? Exploring the Institutional Robustness of Self-Regulation in the Antarctic Tourism Sector,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 17(4): 411–30.
IAATO 2019. “Objectives.” IAATO website. https://iaato.org/objectives.
IAATO 2022. “IAATO Overview of Antarctic Tourism.” XLIV ATCM IP042.
Kaján, E 2014. “Community Perceptions to Place Attachment and Tourism Development in Finnish Lapland”, Tourism Geographies 15(2): 490–511.
Kerr, R, and E Stewart 2021. “ ‘Motherhood Capital’ in Tourism Fieldwork: Experiences from Arctic Canada”, Tourism Geographies 23(1-2): 33–52.
Molenaar, EJ 2021. “Participation in the Antarctic Treaty System,” The Polar Journal 11(2): 360–380.
Powell, R, S Kellert & S Ham 2008. “Antarctic Tourists: Ambassadors or Consumers?” Polar Record 44(3): 233–241.
Stewart, E, D Liggett & J Dawson 2017. “The Evolution of Polar Tourism Scholarship: Research Themes, Networks and Agendas,” Polar Geography 40(1): 59–84.
Tervo-Kankare, K, E Kaján and J Saarinen 2018. “Costs and Benefits of Environmental Change: Tourism Industry’s Responses in Arctic Finland”, Tourism Geographies 29(2): 202–23.
Verbitsky, J 2013. “Antarctic Tourism Mangement and Regulation: The Need for Change,” Polar Record 49(3): 278–285.
Vila, M et al 2016. “Contrasting Views on Antarctic Tourism: ‘Last Chance Tourism’ or ‘Ambassadorship’ in the Last of the Wild”, Journal of Cleaner Production 111(B): 451–460.
The growth and diversification of Antarctic tourism is the source of several environmental, cultural, and governance challenges. With these challenges, however, come opportunities. Tourism in Antarctica is more closely mediated than perhaps anywhere else in the world; apart from a handful of yacht travelers and adventurers, tourists do not encounter the continent independently. Almost all tourists travel with an operator and over 98% travel on a cruise ship, visiting selected sites in the Antarctic Peninsula region (IAATO 2022). These tourists experience the continent in a carefully curated way, with onboard lectures and activities as well as guided excursions framing their encounters with the environment. What are the possibilities to use this mediation as a way to increase visitors’ knowledge of and care for the region and the planet? How can operators create a journey to Antarctica which opens tourists’ minds to the richness of its natural environment, history of human interaction, and role in global climate systems, rather than simply reinforcing stereotypes of visual spectacle, charismatic wildlife, and heroic explorers?
The Antarctic tourism industry argues that first-hand experience of the continent turns travelers into champions for the region (IAATO 2019), although the empirical evidence for this is equivocal at best (Bauer 2001; Powell, Kellert and Ham 2008; Eijgelaar, Thaper and Peters 2010; Vila et al 2016). While it is easy to be cynical about ‘Antarctic Ambassadorship’ as a marketing ploy, we might better ask what opportunities exist to deliberately design Antarctic journeys that do make a difference, and who should be involved in this design. For example, alongside the role of tour operators and their collaborative efforts, there is an important role for gateway cities and (air)ports, the scientific community, expedition guides and crew.
National and cultural diversification also creates significant opportunities for a wider range of people to experience Antarctica first-hand and learn about its natural and human histories. Preliminary research focussed on Chinese visitors, however, suggests that Western expedition staff’s delivery of the Antarctic tourist experience neglects important points of connection, concluding that “understanding cultural diversity in the Antarctic experience would bring better advocacy for conservation as well as ecosystem health of Antarctica” (Cheung, Bauer and Deng 2019, 207–208). What can research bring to this process of cultural awareness in Antarctic tourism and to the role of the encounter?
Governing tourism activities is challenging in a region where human activity is regulated not by one sovereign state but rather a collection of states, through an international treaty. The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), which applies to the area South of 60 degrees Latitude and currently has fifty-five signatories, governs all activities in the region, including tourism, in the interests of science, peace and environmental protection. The Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty in particular provides stipulations and requirements for undertaking tourism activities in the Antarctic region, including environmental impact assessments and permitting through Antarctic Treaty member states; reporting; safety requirements; and guidelines. Implementing existing agreements and developing additional policies to address tourism growth, diversification and impact is challenging and slow due to the mechanics of consensus-based decision making within Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) (Molenaar, 2021; Verbitsky, 2013). Alongside the ATS, and perhaps due to the challenges of state regulation, self-regulation under the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) is considered an important governance mechanism for ensuring safe and sustainable tourism activities in Antarctica. IAATO has developed and promotes a range of industry guidelines (Haase et al., 2009), but membership is not compulsory and the association is not in a position to enforce operational restrictions on its members. What could novel ways of governing and organising tourism look like? To what extent can the Antarctic be conceived as a global commons? And what is Antarctic tourism’s geopolitical role?
Like the industry itself, polar tourism scholarship has been increasing over the last two decades, with considerable attention from an interconnected group of highly active researchers primarily within Arctic and Antarctic studies, and a strong focus on development and management (Stewart, Liggett and Dawson, 2017). Mainstream tourism research, however, has tended to ignore the far north and far south. In nearly 25 years of its existence, Tourism Geographies has published no articles dealing even partially with Antarctic tourism and only a handful focussed on the Arctic (e.g. Tervo-Kankare, Kaján and Saarinen 2018; Kerr and Stewart 2021; Kaján 2014; Cooper 2022). In an era of climate change and growing anthropogenic impact on all corners of the planet, however, these erstwhile marginal regions are moving toward the centre of consciousness and geopolitical actions, as their melting glaciers and destabilising ice sheets threaten to raise sea levels and inundate low-lying areas. Polar tourism is no longer a topic of niche interest, but one that should be central to tourism research.
This special issue asks researchers to look to the south: to better understand the contemporary tourism geographies of the Antarctic and to address tourism challenges and opportunities, past, present and future. We welcome contributions from across the sciences (natural/social) and humanities, including theoretical, conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, historical and textual analyses. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- The place of the Antarctic in the global system of tourism production and consumption
- Antarctic tourism’s geopolitical role
- Antarctic wilderness and meaning-making
- Managing, governing and regulating Antarctic tourism: IAATO, the ATS, and beyond
- Antarctica as global commons
- Environmental impacts: threats and solutions
- Antarctic ambassadorship: real phenomenon or greenwashing?
- Antarctic tourism in the Anthropocene
- Cultural diversity and the Antarctic tourist experience
- Safety and resilience in an extreme tourism environment
- The role of education and citizen science activities in tourist experience
- Rituals, traditions and tests: the polar plunge, ice marathons, mountaineering
- Expeditioner, tourist or polar traveller? Questions of identity
- Antarctica as a mediated destination: pre-departure perceptions of place
- Low-latitude Antarctic tourism: departure ports, gateway cities, polar museums and attractions.
Guest Editors
Associate Professor Anne Hardy works in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She has a keen interest in tourist behaviour and sustainable tourism. Among Anne’s best-known research projects is the multiple award-winning Tourism Tracer. This project was the first to track tourists, with their consent, for the duration of their holiday throughout entire destinations. Anne is currently part of an Australian Research Council funded project focussed on tourist experience in Antarctica.
Professor Edward H. Huijbens is a geographer, graduate of Durham University in England and chair of Wageningen University’s research group in cultural geography. Before assuming this post in 2019 he ran the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre (2006-2015) and later worked as a scholar of tourism, professor and head of department at the school of social sciences and humanities at the University of Akureyri, Iceland (2015-2019). Edward works on tourism theory, issues of regional development, landscape perceptions, the role of transport in tourism and polar tourism. He is author of over 40 articles in several scholarly journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Geographies and has published four monographs in both Iceland and internationally and co-edited four books.
Associate Professor Machiel Lamers is based at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He earned his PhD in 2009 at Maastricht University (NL) on the sustainability challenges of tourism development and governance in Antarctica. His research interests are in the fields of tourism and environmental governance, marine tourism and nature conservation, mobile marine sectors and environmental information systems. Machiel has been leading several international research projects on the sustainability and governance implications of cruise tourism in the Arctic and Antarctic region, including the SALIENSEAS project and the ANTARC-SHIP project, a PT-REPAIR project funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). He has been a co-chair of the Polar Prediction Project’s Social and Economic Research Applications committee (PPP-SERA); a current focal programme of the WMO.
Professor Elizabeth Leane is based in the School of Humanities, within the College of Arts, Law and Education, at the University of Tasmania. Her work examines cultural responses to Antarctica past and present, with a recent focus on polar travel and tourism cultures, national Antarctic imaginaries, and ‘gateway’ cities. She is the author or editor of seven books, including Antarctica in Fiction, South Pole: Nature and Culture, Performing Ice and Anthropocene Antarctica. She is currently lead investigator of the Australian Research Council funded project ‘Transforming Tourists’ Antarctic Experience.’
Postdoctoral Researcher Alix Varnajot is based at the Geography Research Unit, within the University of Oulu, Finland. He earned his PhD in Human Geography from the University of Oulu in 2020. His PhD dissertation explored conceptual and theoretical developments in Arctic tourism. His research interests encompass tourism at borders, tourists’ performances, as well as the regulation of tourism in the Polar regions. His most recent work has focused on the implications of global warming and a thawing cryosphere to the future of Polar tourism, as well as extreme citizen science in contemporary Polar exploration.
Author Instructions
- Extended abstracts of 1000 words containing (1) full author/s details (affiliation + email address), (2) five-six keywords
- Authors should adhere to Tourism Geographies author guidelines.
- Email abstracts to anne.hardy@utas.edu and edward.huijbens@wur.nl
- All papers will undergo a double-blind review process
Special Issue Timeline
- Call for Abstracts released - March 2023
- Abstracts submitted to guest editors – end June 2023
- Shortlist for special issue finalised – July/Aug 2023
- Informal review of manuscripts by guest editors commences - December 2024
- Completion of informal review of manuscripts by guest editors - January 2024
- Round 1 manuscript submitted to Scholar One - February 2024
- Special Issue Finalised - February 2025 (papers will appear online as they are accepted for publication)
- Special Issue to book process commences - March 2025
- Edited Volume - published September 2025
References
Bauer, T 2001. Tourism in the Antarctic: Opportunities, Constraints and Future Prospects. New York: Haworth Hospitality.
Cheung, W, T Bauer & J Deng 2019. “The Growth of Chinese Tourism to Antarctica: A Profile of their Connectedness to Nature, Motivations, and Perceptions”, The Polar Journal 9(1): 197–213.
Cooper, E 2022. “Making Sense of Sustainable Tourism on the Periphery: Perspectives from Greenland”, Tourist Geographies https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2022.2152955
Eijgelaar, E, C Thaper & P Peters 2010. “Antarctic Cruise Tourism: The Paradoxes of Ambassadorship, ‘Last Chance Tourism’ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, Journal of Sustainable Tourism 18(3): 337–354.
Haase, D, M Lamers & B Amelung 2009. “Heading into Uncharted Territory? Exploring the Institutional Robustness of Self-Regulation in the Antarctic Tourism Sector,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 17(4): 411–30.
IAATO 2019. “Objectives.” IAATO website. https://iaato.org/objectives.
IAATO 2022. “IAATO Overview of Antarctic Tourism.” XLIV ATCM IP042.
Kaján, E 2014. “Community Perceptions to Place Attachment and Tourism Development in Finnish Lapland”, Tourism Geographies 15(2): 490–511.
Kerr, R, and E Stewart 2021. “ ‘Motherhood Capital’ in Tourism Fieldwork: Experiences from Arctic Canada”, Tourism Geographies 23(1-2): 33–52.
Molenaar, EJ 2021. “Participation in the Antarctic Treaty System,” The Polar Journal 11(2): 360–380.
Powell, R, S Kellert & S Ham 2008. “Antarctic Tourists: Ambassadors or Consumers?” Polar Record 44(3): 233–241.
Stewart, E, D Liggett & J Dawson 2017. “The Evolution of Polar Tourism Scholarship: Research Themes, Networks and Agendas,” Polar Geography 40(1): 59–84.
Tervo-Kankare, K, E Kaján and J Saarinen 2018. “Costs and Benefits of Environmental Change: Tourism Industry’s Responses in Arctic Finland”, Tourism Geographies 29(2): 202–23.
Verbitsky, J 2013. “Antarctic Tourism Mangement and Regulation: The Need for Change,” Polar Record 49(3): 278–285.
Vila, M et al 2016. “Contrasting Views on Antarctic Tourism: ‘Last Chance Tourism’ or ‘Ambassadorship’ in the Last of the Wild”, Journal of Cleaner Production 111(B): 451–460.
