Antarctica: The new hot destination
As the global recession thaws, affluent Chinese in pursuit of a different vacation are spending lots of cold, hard cash on South Pole adventures
Zeng Jinger's childhood dream was to visit a place very few of her compatriots would have agreed was the ideal overseas holiday. It has no shops, no people, and no food - or at least not for human consumption.
"I wanted to see the vastness, the ice and it was worth it. But it's only become possible recently," says Zeng, a Guangzhou-based media executive who made her trip last year on a ship that sailed out of Argentina.
Zeng is part of the growing urban upper class in Chinese cities who are changing tourism patterns in the world's second-largest economy by spending more of their disposable income on adventure travel.
Two years ago, the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators didn't even list China in its statistical overview of tourists. An estimated 2,328 Chinese citizens travelled to the Antarctic, which includes the continent of Antarctica, in last year's travel season, which usually runs from November to March, according to the association's data.
Over the last three years, the increase in Chinese tourists to the Antarctic had only been constrained by the scarcity of tickets, as agencies were unable to meet demand, said Hu Huamin, chairman of Beijing-based travel consultancy DPS.
