Travel tip #155: Is "Last chance tourism" helping?
Published 28 days ago • 7 min read
Hi Reader,
How are you doing?
I am still in Ecuador on our Ecuador & The Galapagos tour, currently in the Galapagos where I will be spending a bit over 2 weeks on our tour and then on another island hopping catamaran tour (the one we have chartered for next year) and a few days on land by myself.
We have seen so many birds and marine life. We have swam with sea lions, snorkelled with sharks, millions of tropical fish, eels, moray eels, rays, seen iguanas (marine and land based), turtles, and so much more. And tomorrow, we are going to see the giant tortoises of the Galapagos, can't wait!
If you are curious to see what the trip looks like follow our group on Instagram stories where I am sharing the program live. I am a bit delayed so you will see the photos and videos from the Amazon part :)
500 EUR OFF Last spot on Croatia & Montenegro and Barcelona & beyond
We have 1 last spot on both of these trips left before we close them for the year, so we are offering a last minute 500 EUR off if you book before the 25th when we will close bookings for good.
To avail the offer, just book the last spot left which is already discounted.
PS: The Pope will be in Barcelona on the 9th and 10th of June to officially inaugurate the final tower left to build in the Sagrada Familia, the tower to Jesus Christ, finally completing the world's tallest church. A great chance to see Spains most visited monument as part of our tour with a guided visit by our wonderful guide Ariadna.
This week's tip is about a recent trend that has me a bit on the fence: "Last chance tourism".
Is "last chance tourism" helping?
The receding glaciers of Iceland
Have you ever seen a social media post that encouraged, almost even pushed you, to visit a place before it changes forever?
It's a "see it before it's gone" kind of FOMO that postulates that you should do everything in your power to go see X or experience Y before it vanishes forever.
I have now been traveling for over 25 years and have revisited many places more than once.
Several of these, have changed dramatically in this time. In particular, Vietnam, Thailand, or Bali are unrecognisable when seen through the lens of 2005. But they are still there, and they have not disappeared. A part of what they used to be has, much like the Barcelona or today has nothing to do with the Barcelona of my childhood, but they are still there.
"Last chance tourism" focuses on visiting places that are literally not going to be there for much longer.
Think glaciers melting, islands sinking under rising seas, forests disintegration due to burning and clearing, animals going extinct, corals bleaching, etc.
The concept makes me slightly uneasy, not least because, by pushing people to go visit as soon as possible, we may be accelerating what is about to happen.
Travel is one of the most polluting industries when considering for the fuel required to get to far flung places and is believed to account for about 10% of global gas emissions.
This is a reality I have to grapple with given my job and what we are trying to do at Solo Female Travelers, namely, connecting people and bringing the world closer together while providing employment opportunities to women.
By promoting seeing a melting glacier or a remote island in the Pacific (or the Indian Ocean) before they disappear, we push more C02 into the atmosphere making rising sea levels or global warming worse.
Inside Iceland's glaciers, on our ice cave tour
The desire to see something before it disappears has brought large numbers of people to places like Iceland, where Europe's largest, yet fast-melting glaciers are. Or to the Maldives, which is made of thousands of low-lying and therefore submerging, sandy islands.
Yet, on the other hand, it is hard for people to feel any attachment, and therefore any connection, to something or someone we have never met. It is easy to pass by an unhoused person in the street that is begging, but it is much harder to say no to someone you know who asks for help.
Many NGOs in any field, from wildlife conservation to children welfare, will tell you that a lot of their efforts are around making sure they humanise the people in need.
Once you've been to a place, you have a much closer attachment to it and this leads to a greater willingness to help preserve it.
There is a fine balance and equilibrium between helping people understand the challenges and risks some disappearing parts of the world are going through and the pressure this awareness efforts bring to the fragile ecosystem.
For example:
The coral bleaching in The Great Barrier Reef prompted travelers to visit en mass, and local operators to push numbers, so they could see it before it disappeared. This brings more boats, more fuel pollution, more damage from dropped anchors, and higher pressure on an environment that is barely coping.
Antarctica could also be an ecosystem at risk, with more visitors arriving, and higher risk of invasive species or pressure on a melting landscape, though this has yet to happen and arrival numbers stabilised in the 2025/2026 season.
A new ski lift now takes skiers closer to the receding Mer de Glace glacier in the French Alps, putting pressure on the already fragile ice with construction machines and more trampling.
Uncontrolled snorkeling trips to disappearing reefs bring thousands of people standing on corals, kicking them, picking pieces up and adding distress to wildlife. Something I have seen across Southeast Asia on pretty much every trip from Malaysia to the Philippines, Indonesia, etc.
This rush to see places before they disappear has been termed, in the academic world, eco-necrotourism.
How can last chance tourism help instead of harm?
Penguins have right of way in Antarctica
The theory around this trend is that for the benefits to outweigh the damage, the awareness from being in contact with a fragile, threatened or disappearing ecosystem should result in a behavioral change that decelerates the very effect that is putting them at risk, or at least offsets it.
In other words, that seeing how the glaciers are melting, and are melting fast, should encourage visitors to change their impact on the environment to delay climate change. Or at the very least, carbon offset the climate impact of their trip.
Whether this is happening after travelers get up and close with a fragile and disappearing ecosystem is hard to measure.
There have been studies on passengers onboard Antarctic cruises that showed minimal change reported after the trip, while other studies have shown that after seeing a melting glacier, respondents were more likely to do something to reduce their ecological footprint.
At the same time, measures and regulation need to be put in place to minimise the impact visitors have. This could mean daily caps like in Antarctica, or fees like in Venice.
For last chance tourism to be a positive net effect, the traveler must connect, understand and act to minimise their impact as a result, during and after their visit.
Have you visited any place because you feared it may not exist for much longer? Have you ever considered the environmental impact of your travels to fragile destinations? Has travel helped you understand the impact of global warming?
Hit reply and share your thoughts.
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Infinity pool vibes in Bali
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