Why is Last-Chance Tourism on the Rise?

At the Mer de Glace, I saw that people could come away with a shifted perspective, a deepened kind of emotional understanding of this.

Of course, I also saw a ton of people who take the little red train up, get out, take a selfie in front of the glacier, buy their espresso, and the little buya take a little train home.

And take a little train home.

In the last few decades, a new tourism trend has emerged.

Emerged.

Tourists are going out of their way to see places before they disappear.

People are voyaging down to Antarctica to see it before it melts and flying to Australia to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef before it's gone.

And here in Canada, people travel to the Athabasca Glacier to see it before it completely melts.

This is what has been deemed last chance tourism.

It's the growing trend of rushing to visit places that are disappearing due to climate change, environmental destruction, and other factors.

But what does that really mean for the places themselves, for the tourism industry that is built around these places, and for the travelers who seek to see these places before they're gone?

Today, we're diving into the phenomenon of last chance tourism.

How it started, why it's so appealing, and the ethical questions it raises.

And we will, of course, ask the big question, should travelers rethink the see it before it's gone mindset?

This is Curious Tourism, the podcast focused on making travel better for people and for the planet.

I'm Erin Hines, travel writer and content creator, and I'm joined by my producer, Katie Lohr.

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Here to discuss is Paige McClanahan.

She is a travel journalist and author who has reported from more than a dozen countries, writing for publications like the Guardian, the BBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Recently, Paige published her book, the New Waking up to the Power and Perils of Travel.

Her book explores how tourism has shaped the world for better or for worse, and provides a genuinely helpful framework for thinking about our own travels.

Hey, Paige, welcome back to Curious Tourism.

Hi guys.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, we're Excited to have you.

We haven't spoken with you in quite some time.

I think the last time we chatted with you was like maybe 20, 22 on the show.

Yeah, it's been a while.

Yeah.

So I'm excited to have you back and we're going to chat about it more.

But you have written and published a book which is a fantastic read.

I'm reading it for the second time.

It's called the New Tourist.

We'll talk a bit about it right at the end.

But yeah, before we get into our chat, I know you have a new story that you wanted to bring to discuss with us, so I'll let you share what that is.

The new story that I want to talk about, it's actually kind of a collection of different stories that I've seen written about from different angles.

But the general theme of kind of fear around travel or, you know, travel boycotts or hesitations to travel or cancel travel plans because of the new Trump administration that we have in my home country of the United States, which is no longer the country where I live, but is the country where I carry a passport and I am American.

So reading these stories as an American abroad has kind of hit home, really.

And I'm curious, really to hear your perspective, you know, the Canadian perspective on this too, because obviously there's been tension over the U.S.

canadian border.

One article that I just read really recently that kind of got into this was a column by Robert Reich and he wrote a column in the Guardian, I think, just in mid March, kind of inviting people to consider boycotting travel to the United States out of kind of both concerns for their personal sort of safety and well being and the fact they might get detained at the border.

And also as a way to, you know, kind of make a statement or say that this is not, you know, I don't want to contribute my tourism dollars to a country that's going in this direction.

I was struck by that.

And this is something that, you know, I've come up, you know, in conversations with people I've, with friends just, you know, I've had not with non American friends, conversations I've had with non American friends who are kind of asking themselves this question.

So that's kind of the topic that I would love to get into.

And also, yeah, hear the Canadian perspective on this, which I imagine this is like really a difficult thing for a lot of Canadians to be thinking about.

And I imagine it's weighing on you a lot.

Oh, definitely can confirm Canadians are boycotting a lot of American Things at the moment.

Yeah.

Something I find really interesting, actually, in chatting with friends of mine who are actually in the US is that I think there is a major disconnect between the perceptions that Americans have of what other countries view is happening in the US Compared to what people in those other countries are experiencing and feeling and seeing.

Because I was speaking with a friend of mine who's based in Seattle, and I told her basically everyone I know is canceling any travel they had booked to the US I know some bloggers who are going just because they have contracts that they have to honor.

But a lot of people, like people I know who vacation every year in the US have decided not to go.

Most people within my circles are not buying US Products in stores.

The reaction in Canada has been, like, very wide and very intense.

I'd be interested to hear how people are reacting where you are in the eu, But I know for Canadians it is very.

It's a very intense reaction because, like, we're also having our sovereignty threatened by the US President.

And I don't know if Americans in the US are really aware of how intense those threats have been.

And I know a lot of people may write them off as jokes, but with the history of this president and with the severity of a threat like that, you would be silly to write that off as a joke.

So a lot of Canadians are really upset, really afraid.

I will tell you, I have heard people ask each other, like, what happens if there's a draft?

Are you going to do it?

There are Canadians here that truly believe there is a larger war coming.

I don't think that is a wild idea anymore to Canadians, which is wild for me to say.

It truly is.

And I've had, like, very intense discussions with my own family about what is going on.

Like, Canadians feel very and very scared.

So the concept of not traveling to the US Is kind of a given.

I know there are Canadians that still are.

Obviously, I can't speak for all Canadians, but in my circles, this has been reflected quite a lot in the news as well.

Katie, what are your thoughts?

Because you're in a different region, so maybe you're noticing different reactions.

No, it's basically the same reaction.

And it's interesting because, Erin, you're deep in the blogging sphere, I'm deep in the Canadian podcasting sphere.

And something that's been going on in Canadian podcasting has been.

There's a bunch of podcast conferences happening in the States over the next few months, and they're pretty big ones that a lot of, like, brands go to.

You can find clients there.

You can.

It's just like America is the space where podcasts are.

Podcasts are huge.

So it makes sense for Canadians to want to go to these conferences.

But now there's been a lot of talk about, like, not going to them.

There have been a couple of campaigns that have come out that are giving Canadians sort of advice and a checklist on what to do if they're planning to go to the States, which is have a lawyer ready to go, turn.

Off your phone when you go over.

The border, check that you don't have like any anti Trump stuff on your phone or like in your social media that's gonna be sitting there making sure that you know how to contact the Canadian embassy.

Like, all of these things that just make it seem like very dangerous to go to the US and this is something I've actually told a couple of colleagues who are planning to go to a podcast conference in a couple of weeks where I'm like, I'm kind of nervous for you guys.

Like, here, check out this little.

This checklist here.

Because I don't know if I'd want to be going, to be honest.

Like, I don't really have any plans to go to the US because we also saw the story of the woman who was detained, the Canadian who was detained for, I think 10 days and didn't have any contact with her family until her family brought it to the media.

So, yeah, pretty scary stuff.

Similar in the blogging space, especially because a lot of bloggers.

I'm in the Canadian Media association of Travel, so it's a lot of journalists, a lot of bloggers and creators, and the private Facebook group.

Almost every day is discussions about this, about whether, like, we should be taking work in the US Whether we should be canceling.

A lot of heated discussions and a lot of people are bowing out, including journalists, saying, I don't want to be working there at the moment.

I know we've been on a tangent, but the last thing I'll mention is I listened to a really interesting podcast episode from the CBC this week, which is the Canadian broadcaster, and they were talking about sort of the history of nationalism amongst Canadians and how everything happening has made Canadians suddenly embrace nationalism in a way that we typically don't.

I think Canadians are kind of known for this.

We're such a diverse, sort of like, pieced together society that we don't have the same.

Like, when I'm in the US I'm always surprised by how people, like, fly American flags.

And it's just a very different vibe.

Canadians aren't really like that.

But the threat of another country has really made us come together into this, like, singular identity, which is really interesting to see, especially the person, the journalist they were interviewing, he was saying, I never really thought of myself as a nationalist.

Like, I was never nationalist for Canada.

And I'm kind of, like, hesitant to say this now because it feels odd to say, but I really feel it now.

I think that's a pretty universal experience for Katie.

And for sure, I think, like, we're very critical of things that happen here in Canada.

And so, yeah, it's a strange time for us.

Anyways, that's been quite a tangent.

I'm curious to hear, Paige, your experience, especially as American living abroad.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm in a really lucky position in a lot of ways.

But just looking at this from a European perspective, I mean, I think a lot of Europeans are feeling the same kinds of fear and threats that Canadians are experiencing.

But, of course, because there's an ocean separating the continents, it's probably not as immediate.

But I know in the Guardian and in, like, German media, there have been stories about Brits and Germans who've been detained at the border.

I think especially with the border between, like, Mexico and California, you know, detained for a couple of weeks or six weeks without any kind of context.

So there are these kind of, you know, horror stories or, you know, really scary stories that are in the media.

And I know there have been media reports that both the UK and the German governments have updated their official travel advice on their websites, you know, just reminding people that there's only so much that our government can do to help you, you know, UK or German citizen, if you're trapped at the border, and that there is a risk of arrest or detention.

So scary stuff.

And, you know, when you see that, yeah, it's hard not to feel the fear.

And I've just had, you know, just friends kind of making quick comments like, oh, gosh, like the U.S.

like, you know, saying, like, oh, Paige, you're going back to visit your family this summer?

Like, well, yeah, who knows how long they'll still be letting foreigners in or something.

Good thing you have your American passport, you know.

And then Trump is talking.

And then Trump, at the same time is talking about a travel ban, a new travel ban on a list of, I think, like, you know, 30 or 40 countries that's still under discussion.

So it's really.

I mean, for me, I'm kind of like, wow, I'm just Feeling it's like this big cloud of fear and otherness, right?

Like, who is that?

You know, those people on the other side of that border, you know, they're like, the differences are just growing and growing.

And it's like, okay, how do I as an individual stay in a place of kind of love sounds so cheesy about it, but like love and openness and I can.

Staying out of fear, it's really, really hard to do.

But I mean, I'm thinking of another news article that I read that was in the New York Times that was looking at this question from an American perspective and saying that Americans are now more scared to travel abroad because they don't know how they're going to seen.

And maybe if they're Americans listening, imagine there are Americans listening, maybe I would just speak to my fellow Americans and say, I really encourage you to travel outside of the United States because understandably, people who don't have an American passport are going to be scared to come to our country because they might get jailed.

But we as Americans, we can still travel out.

Probably we want to make sure we don't have Trump stuff on our phones when we travel back home.

But we can travel out.

We can be citizen diplomats, we can educate ourselves about the perspectives of Canadians on America or Europeans on America, and we can be ambassadors for our home country, which so many of us Americans just do not recognize at all.

It's not much different.

So how do we, what can we do?

We Americans, we can still travel and we can just aim to be a positive force in the world in our own individual capacity, regardless of what is happening along our borders or in our government.

But yeah, it's a scary time.

And with the implications of all that, you have to think of the broader implications of people not crossing borders anymore.

And it gets to what's important about travel.

It's cross cultural communication and contact and mutual understanding.

And if we all were all staying in fear and staying at home, that doesn't give me a lot of hope for the future.

I also, I just need to say this.

I hope that any American who is listening is calling their representatives every single day.

You need to call every single day.

Every day.

It's one of the few things we can do or Americans can do.

But it's interesting you bring this up because I'm in Toronto subreddits, and I've seen a huge Influx of posts from Americans saying, I want to come visit Toronto.

Are you going to welcome me?

They're afraid.

They're afraid to come visit.

And the posts are always.

The comments are always, we, of course, like Canadians.

We're not unkind people, and we understand the nuance of this.

Not every American voted for this.

Not every American wants this.

So I do think Americans can, like, comfortably and safely travel here, of course.

And I think that's important to say as well.

We're obviously very aware that a lot of Americans, most Americans probably are not happy with what is happening and don't want this.

Which is kind of why it makes it a shame that I feel so uncomfortable with the idea of traveling to the US Because I've always been one to say that I'm not going to draw moral lines in travel because you can find really problematic things with every government around the world.

I think the difference here is this is just so personal, and the threat of crossing the border is actually quite scary for Canadians at this point, so.

Oh, totally, yeah.

I mean, when your personal safety is really in question, or could be in question, that makes it feel very different.

I imagine just thinking of a moment when I was scared to travel and I went to Saudi Arabia for my book, and I went as a solo female journalist, but I decided to travel just as a tourist because I didn't want to sort of get on the radar of anyone who wanted to sort of, like, track what I was doing.

And I was scared to go.

And I didn't have any experience in that part of the world, really, and I didn't speak any Arabic, but I really wanted to go for out of professional curiosity.

I wanted to write about tour in Saudi Arabia in my book.

I was scared to go, and I was really trying to keep a low profile, but I was just there as a tourist.

I didn't request any official interviews.

And I had this really profound experience and one interaction in particular.

My very last day in Riyadh.

I was with my tour guide, this fascinating Saudi woman named Fatima, who I later wrote about in the New York Times.

She was going to give me a ride to the airport in her pickup truck, and the battery died.

And we were in this kind of busy parking lot in Riyadh, and we're sitting there and it's like, oh, God, I got to get to the airport.

What are we going to do?

And this young Saudi guy comes jogging over.

He sees with the hood up, and he's like, oh, he speaks R in Arabic.

I hear the word for American he looks at me, switches to very good English, and he's super like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's happy to help.

He runs to his car, gets the little battery pack to give us a jump.

We get a jump, it's cool.

Yay.

We're going to go to the airport.

Not going to miss my flight.

But he's like, wait, wait, wait.

He wants to talk to me.

And he was wearing a traditional Saudi robe, kind of a white long sort of thobe, I think it's called.

And he was.

He's like, you're from the United States.

Like, we're in the United States.

So I told him we're having a chat, and he was like, yeah, I was in the United States.

I went like, he and a friend had gone after their architecture exams, and they'd gone to Orlando and New York City.

And I was like, that's so cool.

And he was like, you know, I had such a good time there.

And he was like, I was so scared to go because of what I'd seen on the news and social media and, like, guns and crime and everything.

And I went to the United States, and he's telling this to me.

And I was, like, getting chills as he was telling this to me.

And he was like, do you know, you wouldn't.

Like, you wouldn't believe it.

I felt so safe the entire time I was there.

Like, he was just blown away, and he was.

I felt so safe the entire time.

And he told me, like, word for word, he was like, the United States is nothing like what you see on the news or in social media.

And I was like, whoa, chills.

I was like, amen, brother.

Amen.

Saudi Arabia.

My experience of Saudi Arabia was nothing like what I had seen in the news or on social media.

And I was just like, wow, we are here having this superhuman interaction with this Saudi young man who had this, like, fun trip to Orlando in New York.

And me, you know, like, at the time, you know, 41 year old, sort of solo white female, traveling in Saudi Arabia, and we just had this moment of connection.

And he was so genuinely just, like, joyful sharing this with me.

And I felt that.

And I was like, chills.

And I was like, I need to share this anecdote in my book.

As an American who's lived abroad for most of my adult life, I've met a lot of people who've said, no offense, Paige, but I would never travel to your home country.

And I get it.

I really get it.

And this is even before Trump.

And I get It.

But I see my home country the way I see Saudi Arabia as a beautiful, deeply flawed country that's home to millions of diverse souls.

And that's the whole world, right?

That's the whole world.

Realistically, every country is that.

Yeah.

It's like we're.

We're all that.

Like, how do we get past the fear?

I mean, how do we remember.

How do we have those, like, let me jump your car, you know, in the parking lot sort of connection moments?

And, like, I feel like there's some sort of element of, like, the solution to, like, defining world peace that happens in those sort of interactions, you know, And I just hope that as we're all navigating that the fear and the.

The technicalities or the detentions or the, you know, that we kind of keep a sort of a true north of, like, how do we still seek out those moments, even despite everything that's being thrown on our shoulders in this moment?

I'm really excited to chat with you about Last Chance Tourism.

There is a chapter in your book about this.

It's a theme that comes up a lot in the travel space lately, I'm finding.

I wanted to ask very simply, what in your mind is last chance tourism?

And if you can share some context around when, why, and how it became a phenomenon.

Yeah.

So it's a little bit morbid.

But Last chance tourism is this idea that there are some places that are threatened with extinction, sort of natural sites, cultural heritage sites that are actually on the decline, and we know they're going away.

And the fact that these places are disappearing is increasing their attraction as tourist destinations.

So this idea that the fact that the place is going away means, okay, quick, let me go see it quick, before it's gone.

And so visitor numbers are rising because the place is threatened.

And we started there's another term for it called doom tourism, which I think kind of has a roughly equivalent meaning.

And the term can be used outside of the context of climate change, but really, climate change is, I think, where we're seeing this term used most often with respect to tourist destinations like glaciers or certain Arctic or Antarctic landscapes.

And the fact that with temperatures rising and the climate changing, of course, the big story is really a lot of glaciers are disappearing.

And in my book, in the section on last chance Tourism, I focused on glacier Tourism, because this is something that I had personal experience with and at the time that I was writing the book, I lived within a sort of hour, hour and 15 minute drive of a really very well known and well visited glacier in the French Alps.

So I used this as an opportunity to dive into glacier tourism, last chance tourism in that area in particular, and look at some of the ethical questions, the practical questions, and just try to, you know, in the book, I try to give people as sort of a framework for thinking about it a little bit.

So it seems like to me, and from what you've said, that there is a sort of correlation between climate anxiety growing and doom tourism growing.

I like to call it doom tourism.

I don't know, I feel like it captures the darkness of it, which we're going to talk about.

But, yeah, I wanted to talk a bit about Mer de Glace, which is the glacier that you lived nearby.

Yeah, so Mer de Glace translates to sea of ice, and it is a mass, massive valley glacier that is in the French Alps.

Could you share with us a bit of the history of Mer de Glace and how it became a tourist attraction and maybe a bit about the impact that tourism has had on the glacier.

I love geeking out about glacier tourism in the Alps, so, wow, I'm excited to answer this question.

Yeah, the Mer de Glace is this beautiful glacier that kind of descends from the slopes of Mont Blanc kind of right there near the French Italian border, where kind of France, Italy and Switzerland all come together.

But the Mer de Glace glacier in France that comes down from Mont Blanc towards Chamonix, which, you know, this kind of mountain resort town which lies in the shadow of Mont Blanc, it has been attracting tourists for a really long time.

A couple of British adventurers spotted it, you know, kind of came to Chamonix and climbed up and saw it.

And then they went back to England and wrote about it.

And this is what is often described as the beginning of kind of, you know, the glacier's fame outside of this corner of France.

And in the 19th century really started to see a lot of tourists from around Europe coming to visit the glacier.

And at the time, you could sort of hike up or take a mule ride up this sort of track to get to the viewpoint looking over the glacier.

Mark Twain later visited and wrote about it in his sort of travelogs, which sold Very well in the United States at the time.

And it's really very beautiful.

And this train exists now, of course, it's been updated.

But you can take the little red kind of cogwheel train from the middle of Chamonix up to the viewpoint at a place called Montanvert, and you can see it from there.

You can also hike down to the surface of the glacier, or you can take a lift down to the surface of the glacier.

I'm forgetting exactly which years, but over the years and how it has dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped.

And it's just seeing that, it's amazing and so striking.

And you're noticing that the farther down you go, the bigger the gaps are getting in terms of the meter distance between the plaques and the shorter the number of years are growing.

So you can see really visibly how the melting of the glacier has accelerated over time.

And in the glacier itself, they carve an ice cave every year and they have to recarve it every year because the glacier is moving, it's shrinking up the valley.

And so every year they move it up a little bit and they recarve it.

And for the book, I got to hang out with the team who carved the ice cave every year.

And I was hanging out with them with their massive ice drilling machine, which was kind of cool and freaky at the same time.

And I had a conversation with the guy, Benjamin Claret, who, who does this for a living, who carves his ice clave.

And it's the work that his dad did and that his grandfather did before him.

And he's like this.

He was at the time I hung out with him, he was 29 and doing this.

And he was like, listen, we know we have another 10 to 12 years at that point.

When it was that 20, 23, I was with him.

He was like, yeah, at this point we know maximum 10 years.

And then the ice cave is going to be done.

And the ice cave has been there.

His grandfather started carving it in like late 40s, early 50s, if I remember correctly, like not long after the end of World War II.

So it's a fascinating site and it's really popular with tourists, really popular with French tourists.

And I saw it, I wrote an article about this for the New York Times as well.

And you can see older French people who visit this site.

A lot of them visited as kids on school trips and they're coming back maybe for the first time in 40 or 50, 60 years, some of them, and they're seeing it again.

And I interviewed an 80 year old man who was, was visibly struck upon seeing the glacier, like he had last been there as a chaperone for a sun school trip in the 80s or something, I'm forgetting.

And he was visibly struck.

And I've interviewed researchers who've done surveys at that spot and said they've seen people burst into tears upon seeing it.

So on one hand, this idea of visiting a destination that's disappearing, it can have these emotional impacts and it can really open our eyes in a way to the fact that this is real, it's happening now, and this is going to be gone.

And you can just really feel climate change in a visceral way that you can't, that you wouldn't have seen if you hadn't visited the glacier.

On the other hand, what is the impact of our presence in that place and to what extent is our presence in that place endangering the site or what's happening there?

So that's really the line that you're having to sort of navigate with last chance tourism.

And I see challenges and opportunities in this type of tourism.

I don't think there are any easy answers, which probably is what makes it so fascinating.

It is fascinating because I've actually read a lot of scathing articles and characterizations of it.

People saying this shouldn't exist, you shouldn't participate in this.

But my gut feeling around it has always been that it's more nuanced than that.

Which is why I really like the chapter in your book about it.

In it, you describe last Chance Tourism as a postmodern approach to travel.

And I just have to share this quote because I just think it's such a great quote you write on our overcrowded, overmapped, over photographed planet.

Human beings are no longer racing to be the first to go somewhere extraordinary or do something exceptional.

Now we're racing to be the last.

And you explained that knowing something is disappearing makes it significantly more alluring for tourists, which I think is such an interesting observation because, because I have seen this mentioned so much in literature written about Last Chance tourism.

It makes sense that that is a motivation for people to go.

They want to see it before it's gone.

But like I mentioned at the top, to me, visiting such places, and you've mentioned this as well, is also kind of distressing.

I would almost liken it to dark tourism.

And I know I'm not alone in this.

I know people personally who have skipped visiting glaciers because they, they know that they don't need to see a glacier to know that the glaciers are melting.

And a friend of mine said to me, to look at one is just a reminder of what is happening to our climate and I don't need that.

So I'm curious if you've encountered this kind of reaction, like people who are saying, I'm not going to participate because it's too emotionally distressing to see the evidence of climate change.

Yeah, I remember I had an interview with a Canadian academic who was really clear in her understanding of last chance tourism, doomed tourism, as really a very hedonistic impulse, a very self interested impulse, a very like, I'm going to go and do this for me, kind of screw the rest of the world or the longer term consequences.

Like, I want this to tick that box or to get that selfie in front of it.

Her position left the least room for kind of nuance, but hearing her, I was like, I get it.

It makes sense, a lot of sense.

Like, that doesn't strike me as totally wrong.

My own experiences at the Mer de glace, I saw that people could come away with a shifted perspective, a deepened kind of emotional understanding of this.

Of course, I also saw a ton of people who take the little red train up, get out, take a selfie in front of the glacier, get back in the little, you know, buy their espresso and the little thing.

Buy a, take a little train home.

Take a little train home.

And that's probably like, what percentage of people have that experience?

Let's be honest, 99%, you know, right.

I mean, okay, maybe 90%.

If, like, if you take the time to walk down, it's hard not to be struck by that.

For somebody who's like trying to navigate this question at an individual level, I would say, like, yeah, really question your own motivations and be really honest with yourself.

Is this something that you want to do because you think it's going to be cool and you really want to get that photo or it just feels like something you need to do before you die?

Because everybody talks about this place and you really must see it.

Okay, that's allowed, right?

But just like, just be aware of that and reflect on that or are you going to really learn and deeply engage and because you want to sort of come away with something that you might share with the wider world or you're trying to do some information gathering?

I think just like with any, any type of tourism, I think questioning and just being really in conversation with our own motivations is so important.

Whether we're going to Amsterdam or a glacier or I don't know, a national park, United States or what's motivating this?

And is it coming from a place of kind of love and curiosity and openness or is it coming from a place of ego and want and self interest?

This is interesting to bring up because I wanted to talk about my only last chance tourism experience that I've ever had, which was to a glacier, but in Iceland.

My partner and I did a guided glacier hike on Skaftafell Glacier, which is in southeast Iceland.

And we had heard that these hikes were very educational and that was indeed our experience.

The guides focused a lot of attention on how fast the glacier is melting, the ecological impact of this.

It felt like most of the tour was about this.

I remember leaving that hike and Luke and I looking at each other and just saying, wow, that was depressing.

And it was depressing because we learned how incredible glaciers are and we didn't know like how living and breathing they are until we were hiking one and this like enthusiastic Icelandic guide was explaining to us like how they shift and move and like how their built.

Like it was just so fascinating.

But then to have that in contrast to the news of the fact that this glacier is actively melting and you can see the evidence of it there, right there as you're hiking it.

It was just a very intense experience.

I know that education is one of the benefits that are commonly cited for last chance tourism.

What are your thoughts around this?

Do you think that awareness can come from last chance tourism that has has a long term or real world impact?

Because this is something I wonder.

It's like you might feel the impact of it in the moment and maybe for a couple weeks after you'll think about it.

But is there really long lasting impact?

I think the point about education is a really important one.

And this is what the researchers who've been looking at last chance tourism have focused on as well.

A they've looked at like what factors can encourage somebody to have a, a more profound or transformative experience at a site.

And number one, it's like the level of emotional reaction that they have, the emotional connection they feel or the emotional impact of the experience.

And secondly, it's the amount of education that they're offered.

So if somebody has a really profound emotional experience and there's a lot of education there, that's there to support them and help them, inform them about personal decisions that they have made or can make that have an impact on this thing that they're seeing, that they're having an emotional reaction to that is a really rich for actually leading to some sort of real change in that person's perspective on the world.

At the Mer de Glace, to their credit, they are, in addition to building this new lift, which is taking people down and up, because a lot of skiers ski down the glacier, and then they'll use the lift to get back up, to get back home at the end of the day.

They're also building a new information center, which, at the time that I was last there, hadn't opened yet.

I think that's due to open this year.

I'd have to double check on that.

But they are leaning into the like, let's use this as an opportunity to really educate people.

At the same time, there are other people in the Chamonix Valley who are, you know, it's scientists who are working on creating new kind of tourism experiences that are also happening in the same kind of Mont Blanc, you know, massif in the same area.

But, you know, looking at.

They're doing sort of pilot projects on.

Okay, what if we invited tourists to come on a hike with.

Led by a nature guide, and we're actually gonna be using the tourists, you know, hikers as, you know, they're going to be contributing to our efforts to count frogs or to count wildflowers or to really actually do some on the ground kind of ecological monitoring that would actually be helpful.

That would support the projects that we're working on.

And this is a way to go, have a beautiful hike in nature, learn about the landscape from a qualified, you know, somebody who's really qualified to speak about this.

And you have a chance to, you know, in your own small way, contribute to some science that's actually, you know, interested in the conservation of this beautiful landscape.

And, yeah, you might kind of see the glacier in the distance as you're going on the hike, but that's not kind of the point.

The point is getting into nature, learning about nature, doing something in whatever, you know, in your own small way to contribute to nature.

So I think that kind of tourism really excites me, and that's something that I think of as, like, really A nice way forward and more involved.

It reminds me, I mean, you've probably seen this on Instagram and TikTok.

You know that meme where it's like, okay, let's go.

Because you look at something and then it's like, okay, I looked at it, now I'm gonna walk away.

And what I hear described about Mer de Glace is kind of like that.

You just go to viewing platform, you look at it and that's it.

Whereas our experience in Iceland, we did the glacier hike specifically because it was a more involved experience and we wanted to have that more in depth interaction.

I don't even know if they do a viewing platform for that particular glacier, but I think there are glaciers here in Canada where you can go and it's just a viewing platform and you just stand there and look at it and read a sign.

I love this idea that you're describing of a more involved experience.

For sure.

Yeah.

And just thinking about Iceland, I also was in Iceland for my book, the second Chapter, where I write about social media.

Among other things, I write about my visit to what I call the Justin Bieber Canyon, which is this canyon sort of on the south coast of Iceland that was made famous by a Justin Bieber music video.

And then visitor numbers just skyrocketed.

And so I spent some time there and I hung out with this ranger lady who works for Iceland Environment Agency who was on staff there and talking to her about it and her perspective.

And she was like.

And they had had to close the canyon for a while so they could build infrastructure so that the visitors were trampling everything.

There's that whole sort of story.

And I was like, how does it feel?

Like what?

You know, you see, you're here every day, you see people coming and going, like, what do you want people to get out of this experience?

Or what does it feel like seeing all these people coming and going?

And she was like, well, first of all, people have.

There aren't as many selfie sticks as there used to be.

I was like, okay.

But she was like, but so many people come and they get the picture and they get back in their car and they keep driving around, keep driving along the coast.

And she was like, I wish people would come and not just get a photo of the landscape, but learn about nature and really and take the time to understand and not just come for the photo, but come for a deeper experience and a learning experience with nature.

And she wasn't like, people stop coming.

She was like, come and have a richer experience.

So we have to talk about Antarctica, because it's something I've been reading a lot about lately.

And I'll be honest, a place that I always assumed I would go to.

Basically my whole life I've been like, one day I will go to Antarctica, but in the last, I would say two years, I've been rethinking that.

And a lot of it is because I've been thinking about my intention in going there, the impact that it would have to travel there.

So for some context, tourism to Antarctica has grown significantly over the last two decades.

Wow.

Yeah, it's quite shocking.

So there are arguments, and I will say I have posted a little bit about this on threads and the reactions are quite interesting.

I find it to be a very.

People are very defensive about travel to Antarctica.

And the most common arguments I've seen is that it's more responsible.

Like, there are ways to do it that's more responsible.

So people quote going on a smaller ship or on a research vessel.

And a lot of people report.

I've seen this on threads, but also in articles that I've read, like, we've discussed that the trip changes their outlook on the planet and on the climate crisis, which is arguably a good thing.

I guess my question is, do we need to travel to the literal end of Earth to understand that the climate crisis is real?

And I think Antarctica is a really interesting example of last chance tourism, because it's a bit different to me, forms of last chance tourism, because it is so logistical to visit.

Once you boil it all down in my mind, it's like, even if I go on a research vessel, even if I go on a smaller vessel, that's like doing more to be responsible.

I still have to fly to the southern end of the planet and I still have to get on a boat and spend a minimum of 10 days on that ship.

So I think it's very hard to package it up in a way that's like, less negatively impactful, whereas visiting a glacier is much more accessible.

It takes a lot less resources to get there and look at that glacier.

So, anyways, I thought this would be an interesting example of last chance tourism to segue into talking about the negatives of last chance tourism in terms of the climate.

Does it really have an impact on the places that we visit?

Like, is Mer de glace really going to melt faster because of incoming tourists?

Do we know this?

Is this something that's being studied?

So, yeah.

I'm curious your thoughts on all that.

Yeah, I mean, for me, Antarctica, the stakes, I mean, this is sort of the same sort of issues that we were talking about with the mer de glace or other glacier tourism, but it's just like turned the volume up to the max on the stakes.

It's one thing if, like me visiting the Mer de Glace when I live like an hour drive away, that's one thing versus me, like, if I want to see, you know, a glacier in the Canadian Rockies or something, like, relative impact.

But yeah, if we're going all the way to Antarctica.

I mean, another issue just to kind of.

That comes up in Antarctica.

It was just as the.

And it was looking at both the environmental impact of tourism there and also the safety impact of, like, having so many human beings on so many ships in a place where the seas are really rough.

Regulation is really kind of a bit scattershot.

If a ship gets into trouble, there's not, you know, it's not that easy to come out and save you.

So it was just looking at a lot of the.

Both of the practical implications of actually human beings who decide they want to be tourists in this incredibly remote, incredibly extreme, in all sorts of ways, part of the world?

What pressure are you putting on the relatively feeble infrastructure around you because you want to go to this place?

And so the bigger knock on implications of wanting as a tourist to go to such a remote and frankly, dangerous extreme part of the world.

I mean, that's another side of last chance tourism.

That kind of enters into the equation when you're talking about such an extreme part of the planet.

As you mentioned, a lot of people who talk about Antarctic tourism in the positive light do put an emphasis on how this can lead to a shift in perspective.

And I can think of a couple of examples of people I know who I've come across in my tourism work who were really inspired by a trip to the Antarctic.

A woman named Christine Beckman, who.

Who has founded a way for travelers to contribute to buying carbon to be scrubbed out of the atmosphere.

And she got the idea for that after coming back from Antarctica and she left the job that she was in to commit herself to doing this.

So it's like, okay, wow, that is one really powerful example of this.

Is that the majority probably not, right?

Yeah.

With Antarctic tourism, we just need to ask those questions even more carefully or even more critically because the impacts are that much higher, the stakes are that much higher, that the outcome of that trip needs to be that much higher as well to sort of, maybe I'm saying justify in kind of air quotes, but to balance out maybe the impact that we're having.

So I think for me, personally, I've never been to the Antarctica Jake.

It's not something that is calling my name, mainly because I'm incredibly vulnerable to seasickness.

And the idea of being on a ship down there just like, oh, my God, sounds like death.

But it's, you know, I think for me that the answer is easy.

Like, no, it wouldn't be worth it.

Like, that's as cool, you know, I want to see so much of the world, but I think that's a part of the world that I'm very comfortable saying.

You know what?

Actually, that's.

That's not for me.

I'm not to say, you know, who am I to say whether it's for you?

That's not my decision.

But for me, like, that's.

Yeah, that's not for me.

I think I'll, you know, I'll set that one aside and I'm.

And I'm okay with that.

And I'll watch videos about it and documentaries about it and I'll enjoy things other people write about it and that's fine.

Yeah, for me, it's the wildlife and photography and the landscape.

And just the more I thought about that, I was like, is that reason enough to go?

I'm not like a professional photographer.

No one needs my photo of a penguin.

There's lots of great photos of penguins out there.

So when I thought about it more deeply, like, that was kind of my conclusion, like, I can enjoy photography in other parts of the world where I'm not going to have such an intense impact.

It's not really necessary for me to go as much as I would like to, but something I think about a lot is regulation around these things, because this is something I've read is an issue in the Antarctic.

There's not really a regulatory body controlling the amount of tourism going there.

And so it becomes one of these questions, like, we're talking a lot about tourist intent, which I think is important.

I would hope that most tourists are intentional about their travel, but regulatory bodies should play a role in this.

There should be limits.

It shouldn't always be up to the tourists to make a moral decision about traveling somewhere.

So on that note, what role do you think governments and tourism boards and destination marketing organizations and et cetera, play in either promoting or restricting tourism to last chance areas like the Antarctica or to glaciers?

Well, yeah, One thing I was really surprised to learn in reporting this story I wrote for the New York Times few years ago about Antarctica was that, yeah, the tourism operators who are working down there are regulated, but they're regulated by the International association of Antarctic Tour Operators, if I got the acronym correct, I aato.

So it's basically industry regulating itself.

So it's an association of companies who have created regulations that they impose on themselves, which are.

So when I found that, I was.

Like, which are in their own interest.

This little wrinkle that I hadn't been aware of before I started reporting this story, that gives me personally another level of, oh, okay.

Am I sure that what I'm entering into, if I were to go there would be, there's a structure, there's a framework there that's ready to welcome me as a tourist in a way that's A, in line with my personal safety and B, in line with the environmental health of the area, like regulations or limits.

We need these and we need government to step in, Whether it's at the really small scale level of this Justin Bieber canyon in Iceland, the government cut off or the Icelandic sort of environment agency cut off access so that they could have the time to allow the space to heal and they could build walkways and they could build toilets and they could build a parking lot.

Just basic infrastructure so that people can come without destroying it.

These are the kinds of things that we really need.

We need governments to step in and create those kinds of structures.

And we need, in some cases, do we need a hard cap on visitors?

Possibly.

The challenges here are so specific, both in kind of place and in time.

And the solutions really need to be specific to the place and the time and the time of year that we're thinking about.

But when we're talking about places that are so fragile that we know are disappearing, the role of government in guiding our experience in these sites, I think becomes really critical.

We can't leave that up to individuals or the people who are making money out of our presence in those places.

Totally agree.

Well, we're going to wrap Shortly.

I just have one more question.

We've kind of touched on this, but I think it's a good place to end off.

Do you think that there is a way for people to change their mindset from.

See it before it's gone, to protect it so it lasts?

How do you think travelers can be part of this shift when they are choosing to participate in last chance tourism?

Yeah, I mean, you know, on one hand, you know, tourism is so fascinating because in one way, we can see tourism as commodifying the things that humanity loves, whether it's beautiful environmental landscapes or important cultural heritage.

You know, tourism turns these things into commodities that we come to consume, which is kind of one way of looking at it.

The other way is that tourism shows us a new way to value these things that we might have taken for granted before, or not appreciate their full value.

Yeah.

As you were saying before, leaning into the chance to learn, the chance to travel with curiosity and humility and a deep awareness of one's impact on the place, a deep honesty with oneself about how my presence is going to.

To affect this place and.

Yeah, and then a real openness to having one's mind opened or having one's perspective shifted, a real readiness to learn, and then a commitment to taking something away from that experience and sharing it with the wider world.

Whether that's just a handful of friends who you recount the story to afterward, or your thousands of social media followers, or whatever audience and quotes you have.

How can you share something that's authentic and meaningful about.

About that place where you had that experience?

I think is something that we can all ask ourselves, whether we're visiting a glacier or a city or, you know, an ancient heritage site.

That's such a great point.

I actually, when I read your chapter on Mer de glace for the first time, I wanted to visually see it because I've not been.

So I went to TikTok, of course, and looked up the glacier.

And most of the content I saw didn't talk about.

About the fact that it is melting.

And I thought that was so interesting.

I was like, it is kind of a reflection of.

It could be one form of a reflection of what people took away from the experience.

And it actually kind of saddened me, to be honest.

Cause I thought, oh, like, this is kind of what I would think is the major takeaway from this experience.

So that's just an interesting anecdote.

Yeah.

Well, let's hope that this information center that they're building is really going to put that front and center in visitors experience there that they'll come away with.

Whether it's like they have a big countdown clock or I don't know what it is.

This is going away and it's marching up, up, up, up.

So, yeah, that's definitely a big part of the story of the mer de glace.

But, yeah, okay.

Before we let you go, I wanted to ask you to share a bit about the new Tourist, which is your book, and.

Yeah, where can people find it?

What is it about?

Just give us a little background about it.

Oh, thanks, Erin.

So it's called the New Waking up to the Power and Perils of Travel.

It was published last June, and it's coming out in paperback in May.

May 13, I think it's coming out in paperback.

And yeah, it's kind of you.

It's all about these sort of topics that we've been talking about over the past hour, including the topic of sort of fear and borders and social media and tourism.

Last chance tourism.

I get into sort of the history of the modern travel guidebook, telling the story of the rise of Lonely planet in the 70s and 80s and how that kind of changed the way so many of us see the world and how it actually impacted the world in very unexpected, in some cases, ways.

So, yeah, I just, you know, I used the book as a chance to go deeper into a lot of the questions that I was already exploring in my travel journalism and to really kind of paint some human, you know, to paint some pictures of some of the really fascinating human beings who I was lucky enough to meet.

In my travels and my reporting, I report also about Amsterdam.

I report about Barcelona, about Hawaii, which has been home to my.

My sister for the last 20 years.

So, yeah, I really think of it.

My goal was to write a book that's fun and engaging and really inviting people to ask themselves the same kind of questions that I'm trying to ask myself.

Why am I traveling?

What impact am I having?

How can I make better, smarter decisions?

So, yeah, I invite people to check it out and find me on social media.

You can find me at you, Paige McClanahan on Instagram and let me know what you think about it, because I'm always eager to hear people's reactions.

Read the book.

It's so good.

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