Tourism booms as the Arctic melts. A critical approach of polar tourism

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,2, , language: English, abstract: Wild bears, double¿digit minus degrees and no comfortable luxury hotel within the range of vision¿ Polar Regions may not look like typical mass tourism destinations. But in fact ¿ they are! For many years, people have been travelling by ship to the coldest regions at the end of the world for watching the abundance of wildlife and the great beauty of these unpopulated continents. The Polar Regions are significant in global environmental change as they both are affected by climate change and influence global climate change. Climate change is expected to be greatest in Polar Regions: more rapid warming is predicted for the Arctic than for any other destination. This increased publicity of Arctic climate change and global warming has created an unimaginable growth of natural tourism. Hundreds and thousands of people are now travelling for watching how ice is melting and animals are suffering for life. The aim of this seminar paper is to examine aspects of a cold tourist destination and to deal critically with the impacts of tourism on Polar Regions. Therefore I am going to concentrate my focus on the following questions: ¿ What is polar tourism and how does it develop? ¿ How do both climate change and tourism affect Polar Regions? ¿ What are the reasons for increased polar tourism? Therefore, the polar region is described in detail and the phenomenon of polar tourism is introduced. After a short description of cruise tourism in Polar Regions, special emphasis is put on the impacts of both climate change and tourists on the Arctic and Antarctic. Besides, the motivation for travelling to Polar Regions is explained and the polar bears viewing industry is examined.