Some wealthy people now may have “second thoughts” about going on adventure tourism, a lecturer said.
Dr. Adele Doran of Sheffield Hallam University said they would “just be replaced by others.”
Trips to the deep sea, space or remote parts of the planet offered “bragging rights,” she said.
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The possible loss of the Titan submersible will not dampen demand for “extreme” tourism where a rescue is unlikely or even impossible, an academic told Insider.
While some people may now have “second thoughts” about embarking on a deep sea dive, or booking a spot on a trip to space, “they’ll just be replaced by others,” said Dr. Adele Doran, principal lecturer in adventure tourism and recreation at Sheffield Hallam University in England.
“I think there’s a bit of a latent demand here for this kind of exploration with people who have the finances to support it. It takes a lot of money to do these things and there will always be people who have that money to spend,” she told Insider.
Super-expensive trips include EYOS Expeditions’ $750,000 visits to the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep, which is nearly seven miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, while Virgin Galactic recently said it’ll soon launch its first commercial spaceflights costing $450,000 each.
Hamish Harding, one of the people on the missing sub, also went to space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin last year.
Hamish Harding after his Blue Origin flight.
Blue Origin
The status afforded to the super-rich by going thousands of meters under the sea, or to very remote parts of the planet, or even off the planet, is a big factor in this market, Doran said, even if people may not readily admit it.
Research on social media posts show that adventure tourists routinely mention how high they climbed, or how far they went, she pointed out. “The bragging rights behind this are important.”
While some lessons are likely to be learned from the feared loss of the Titan submersible, similar incidents could happen again in this “very niche market,” Doran said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if something like this happened going up into space.”
However, in Doran’s view, very few adventure tourists are necessarily looking for an inherently dangerous activity. Most expect those organizing the trip to mitigate much of the risk, or they’d simply “do it themselves,” Doran added.
Yet some people may overestimate the ability to be rescued if something goes wrong in places like South America, where she said helicopters are often unavailable.
Space tourism “may or may not” become viable and affordable to more than just the very wealthy in our lifetimes, the academic said, but the rise of “last chance” tourism would continue.
That refers to the desire to see places such as low-lying islands or ice caps before they are potentially ruined by climate change in the coming decades.
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