Tourism

Abstract

Tourism represents a substantial commercial activity in the polar regions and has rapidly grown and diversified over the last half-century, especially in the Antarctic, where tourism represents the only commercial activity utilising the continent itself. Tourism in the Arctic occurs on a greater scale and often entails interactions with local communities, adding a range of socio-economic effects to the suite of impacts of polar tourism, which shape the discourse around the role of tourism and its governance. The majority of polar tourism is ship based, with concentrations of tourism in the Antarctic Peninsula and in Alaska, as well as in Svalbard