Titanic sub tragedy: Holidays with hubris, the cost of adventure tourism and luxury travel

You an now book a trip to the Titanic as if you were booking a very expensive package holiday. Photo / Titanic Expedition, Oceangate

OPINION:

When does adventure tourism cease to be an adventure?

There was sombre news regarding the fate of five people aboard the Titan submersible on Friday. It is thought that tourists Hamish Harding, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were all killed in a “catastrophic implosion” on a subsea trip to see the wreck of the Titanic. It was a devastating conclusion to a rescue story that captured the world.

It was a very real tragedy that had all the ingredients of the original wreck. It featured luxury travel and a belief that those with a first-class fare were immune to any real danger. It was an exercise in hubris but is it likely to give pause to future extreme tourism projects?

Paying a quarter of a million dollars to visit the site where 1500 passengers lost their lives is pretty morbid.

Before the fateful dive, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush described the effect of visiting the site. The shoes and belongings of passengers from the doomed ocean liner are still visible on the seafloor. But did any of the submersible’s occupants ever think they were in danger?

Having paid US$250,000 a piece (NZ$408,000) for a seat to the bottom of the Atlantic, the trip was reassuringly expensive. Tourists on trips from previous seasons had come away with glowing reviews. Looking through the tiny porthole of the small, high-tech submersible - a space 2.8 by 2.5 metres - they must have felt as secure as passengers on the top deck of the White Star Liner in April 1912.

The OceanGate tragedy is part of a rising trend in extreme tourism and high-end adventure travel. From the depths of the Mariana Trench to the edge of space, ultra-high-end tourism operators like Blue Origin and Oceangate have emerged to produce travel experiences at the edge of what is possible.

It’s hardly surprising that one of the passengers, Hamish Harding, had also been among the first passengers aboard Jeff Bezos’ space tourism shuttle.

These highly specialised and highly expensive itineraries cater to a select few with an outsized influence.

Jeff Bezos was very excited after his trip to space. Photo / Blue Origin

The Adventure Travel Trade Association defends its rarified tourism domain.

It estimates despite its small size the adventure tourism market in the US alone, representing 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, provides 15 per cent of the world’s total tourism spend.

According to their market overview, four high-value adventures generate the same amount of income for the economy they visit as 96 cruise tourists. A higher proportion of revenues from a mountaineering jaunt or remote sailing charter is likely to stay in the country they are visiting, versus the mass market. These are do-gooders doing outsized good, is the message. Please, don’t resent us.

Above all else they are tourists who seek out authenticity and are “willing to take risks and like experiences with some element of danger”, says ATTA. Why go see polar bears in the zoo when you can afford to see them in Svalbard? Why go to watch a James Cameron movie, when you can afford to dive to the wreck yourself?

But there are other reasons why operators indulge the dangerous fantasies of high-net-worth individuals, beyond the fact they tip handsomely.

OceanGate’s Titanic dives began as a NOAA-accredited oceanographic survey, mapping the wreck.

When Oceangate launched its paid missions to the Titanic in 2021 it began advertising for what it euphemistically termed “mission specialists” to join their expeditions aboard Titan. Seats were reserved for these “specialists” whose main qualifications were being able to afford the $250,000 trip.

The doomed submarine Titan was involved in scanning the wreck and building 3D computer models of the site. The highly acclaimed 3D scans of the Titanic which caught headlines earlier this year were in part funded by adventure tourists.

In an advert for the 2021 dive, OceanGate calls for “citizen scientists” to help conservation efforts document the wreck “before she’s gone forever”.

Whatever the tourists’ motives there was a real scientific value to the mission, and real danger.

Adventure tourism to remote destinations has value beyond braggadocious holiday snaps and dinner party stories. It has helped open up remote parts of the world such as Antarctica. For the right price you can fly by private jet to an ice runway in Dronning Maud Land, a place few people see but polar scientists.

In a part of the world where few people go, most polar cruises carry scientific crew and survey equipment. There is a symbiosis between both research programmes - for whom transport in these regions are costly, few and far between - and tourism expeditions - whose guests prize the authenticity afforded by being on scientific vessel. If there’s one thing adventure tourists despise most, it’s being considered a “tourist”.

It’s a story with a long tail. Without adventure tourists, New Zealand would look very different today, and don’t just mean bungy operators in Queenstown.

Far before Jeff Bezos’ and Richard Branson’s space ventures, the 18th-century voyages of discovery would not have taken place without their adventure tourist patrons.

Captain James Cook’s first voyage would never have happened without pre-eminent adventure tourist Joseph Banks. Described as a “patron of the natural sciences” Banks was the 1769 equivalent of a “mission specialist”.

Never considered a great scientist in his own right, Banks was the commercial partner who bankrolled the trip and paid the salaries of the researchers. In effect, he funded a four-year jolly to unknown parts of the South Pacific.

The Titan missions like the Endeavour expedition claimed to have real-world scientific value, they also had real-world risks which cost five people their lives. Do tourists have any business being on these expeditions? There is clearly a lot that can be gained, not just in bragging rights, but also to lose.