Cape Town has great potential as a major gateway for fly-in tourism to Antarctica as it takes only six hours to fly between the two destinations, says Dr Mark Boekstein of the Department of Geography, Environmental Studies and Tourism at the University of the Western Cape.
Boekstein says tourism has become the biggest industry in Antarctica with tourists outnumbering scientists since the early 1990s. Most of the 35 000 tourists of the 2013/14 season arrived by ship from South America, with 498 arriving on direct flights.
Boekstein says fly-in tourism from Cape Town is small but there is a lot of room for expansion. Only 91 of the fly-in tourists (18%) flew directly from Cape Town to Antarctica during the same season. He says only a few seats are reserved for tourists on flights operating between late October and early March by Antarctic Logistics Centre International (ALCI) between Cape Town International Airport and the blue ice Novo Airbase in Dronning Maud Land, using an Ilyushin carrying about 40 passengers. No tourist-specific services exist yet. Another issue is the expense of the flights.
Nevertheless, Boekstein believes the tourism potential lies in the ease of access from Cape Town, particularly for European tourists who are on the same time zone. From Novo Airbase, tourists have access to the Dronning Maud Land Air Network. ALCI, for example, flies from Novo to about 50 destinations in Antarctica using smaller aircraft. Tourist activities include tented camps, visiting penguin colonies and research bases, mountain climbing and cross-country skiing, while the geographic and magnetic South Poles are also accessible. South Africa’s SANAE-IV research station is only a 30-minute flight from Novo.
Boekstein says potential also exists for cruises from Cape Town to the Southern Ocean islands of Marion, Gough and Tristan da Cunha, but legislation prohibiting visits to Marion Island (declared a Special Nature Reserve) would have to be changed first.
Boekstein stresses that it is of utmost importance that South Africa develops a permit system to control tourism to Antarctica because, under the Antarctic Treaty (of which South Africa is a founding member), it is responsible for any environmental emergency caused there by any operation that originates from this country.
He also calls on regional and local government and tourism organisations to start creating awareness of Cape Town as a gateway to Antarctica. Cape Town, he says, does nothing to promote itself as such, whereas other gateways such as Christchurch in New Zealand, Hobart in Tasmania and Ushuaia in Argentina have Antarctic visitor centres, museums and even mid-winter Antarctic festivals attracting tourists.
