Is it worth spending six figures on a trip to Antarctica?
Recently, some netizens posted a ticket for a double standard room for the "China National Geographic" Antarctic Peninsula Expedition that was grabbed for 250,000 yuan, and said, "This ticket is really difficult to grab, I didn't grab the ticket last year, and there was no news on the waiting list for a few months." ”
The netizen's ticket-grabbing behavior caused heated discussions on the Internet, and some netizens thought "Work hard to make money!" A person's life is nothing more than a few moments", and many netizens who "followed the trend" to visit Antarctica came back and regretted that "going to a trip is to spend money to buy sin, which is boring and expensive."
So, is it worth spending six figures on a trip to Antarctica?
Penguins (photo provided by the interviewee)
From research to travel:
Scientific expeditions lead a new craze
In 2023, China National Geographic's "Antarctic Scientific Expedition" suddenly exploded on major social platforms, allowing more people to pay attention to "scientific expeditions". In fact, it has been 26 years since the launch of the Antarctic scientific expedition, and it is only in recent years that it has begun to become popular on a large scale.
According to the screenshot of the order posted by netizens, the 250,000 yuan spent is the cost of the ferry ticket for 2 people. The charging standard of "Antarctic scientific expedition activities" is divided according to the cabin, and the lowest price is 106,800 yuan/person for a triple room, 122,800 yuan/person for a porthole double room, and 129,800 yuan/person for a standard double room, and there are higher prices.
According to the cover news reporter's search, the netizen's Antarctic Peninsula expedition will start on November 26, 2025 and end on December 12, 2025, for a period of 17 days. At present, the 2024 and 2025 expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula have all been sold out.
The company's expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula have different time periods for customers to choose from. Staff said that every Antarctic expedition trip organized by the project team will be different, some through the Viet Nam Polar Peninsula, and some through the Viet Nam Polar Circle. The expedition will be accompanied by a team of experts, including Antarctic geography experts, animal and ecological experts, professional photographers, etc.
2023-2024 Antarctic Tourism Season:
The number of Chinese tourists is among the top three in the world
According to the latest report released by the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), in the 2023-2024 Antarctic tourism season, a total of 122072 people from around the world visited Antarctica, reaching a new high in the total number of tourists, of which Chinese tourists accounted for 7.6% of the total number of tourists, ranking third, only 0.2% different from the second place Australia.
As early as the 2017-2018 Antarctic tourism season, the number of Chinese tourists reached 8,273, accounting for 16% of the total number of global Antarctic tourists, second only to United States, becoming the second largest source country for Antarctic tourism. In the 2023-2024 Antarctic tourism season, the number of Chinese tourists reached a record 9,384, equivalent to one in every 150,000 Chinese going to Antarctica.
According to forecasts submitted to IAATO by expedition companies, the estimated number of visitors to the Antarctic season in 2024-2025 is 107,270, down from more than 120,000 in 2023-2024. On the one hand, the reason for the decline is that global consumption has fallen sharply, and tourists' willingness to travel has decreased, so various adventure companies are relatively cautious. On the other hand, the number of tourists in the 2023-2024 Antarctic season is at an all-time high, which may include a lot of tourist data that has shifted from the epidemic and before the epidemic.
Killer whales (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Polar Tourism Experts:
While visiting the polar regions
Please protect the polar region well, too
Wang Rong, vice president of Chengdu Tour Guide Association and executive director of Chengdu Measurement Culture Co., Ltd., has reached the South Pole six times and the North Pole five times, and is an expert in polar tourism. He told the cover news reporter that he can indeed see some scenery in the polar regions that are different from other parts of the earth.
Penguins (photo provided by the interviewee)
"There are similar landscapes in the North and South Poles, such as glaciers, aurora lights, etc., and there are also very different landscapes. In the Arctic, there are more oceans, with only a few small islands or archipelagos scattered across the vast Arctic Ocean; Antarctica, on the other hand, is a continent surrounded by the ocean, and there are mountain peaks and plateaus on the Antarctic continent. "In addition to some geographical landscapes, the polar regions are also rich in animal resources," the Arctic has fierce polar bears, known as the 'kings of the polar regions', and in the Antarctic, cute penguins. ”
In recent years, Antarctic tourism has heated up, and some netizens think that it is "spending money to buy sin", one of the important reasons is that it needs to go through long-distance flights and long voyages. Wang Rong introduced that to go to Antarctica, you usually have to fly to North America first, and then transfer to South America to go to the southernmost city on the earth, and the flight time is at least more than 20 hours. Afterwards, board polar cruises in Ushuaia, Argentina, and Punta, Chile, before crossing the Drake Passage, known as the Devil's Strait, and riding the waves to the northern edge of the Antarctic land on the Antarctic Peninsula or the three islands. This process is a test for polar visitors, but it will also be unforgettable for a lifetime.
(Photo provided by the interviewee)
In the polar regions, Wang Rong saw not only penguins and free-roaming whales, but also major changes in the ecological environment of the Arctic and Antarctica, especially the melting of glaciers, the collapse of icebergs, and the rise in temperature. He once wrote such a sentence in his circle of friends: "The closer you get, the more distressed you are". "On my polar trips, I witnessed a huge area of glacier collapse into the sea three times, and the experts on board told us that the same glacier has retreated two kilometers in just three years," he said. The uncivilized behavior of individual visitors, especially the garbage left behind by non-degradable substances and the deliberate destruction of vegetation, has caused extremely serious damage to the polar environment. ”
Therefore, he called on people to visit the polar regions while also protecting them, and everyone should be a green environmental protection advocate: "Please keep civilized visits and abide by the rules of the international polar conventions, which is also a basic requirement." While enjoying the beautiful scenery, it is the most wonderful to let yourself be the scenery! ”
Traveler 饺子:
Antarctica, which makes me love life even more
"Each of us is a walker, a walker who comes to this blue planet to measure the beautiful scenery."
In the WeChat video account of travel enthusiast Dumpling (pseudonym), there is a series of 12 episodes about Antarctic exploration. "When we come to this world, we should meet the best people, the most beautiful things, and the most fragrant flowers, so that we can live up to our fate." This is the opening of the final chapter of the dumpling, quoting a quote from Nietzsche.
Dumplings in Antarctica
Dumplings go to Antarctica, which belongs to the lucky "leakage". Unlike many "prepared travelers" who do a lot of homework before going to Antarctica, Dumpling's trip to Antarctica is quite casual.
After the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, as an Argentina fan, she flew to Argentina to celebrate her victory with local fans. Once in Argentina, she began her journey south. At first, I only thought of Ushuaia, the "end of the world", and only after arriving in Ushuaia did I have the idea of going to Antarctica. "At that time, I thought that I had already arrived here, and I must go to Antarctica." Because I also learned before that some Antarctic ships will have Last Minute tickets. Luckily, at the last moment, Dumplings got a bed in a three-person cabin.
To this end, she also summed up a ticket strategy, "The closer to sailing, the lower the fare discount may be, but it will come with the situation that the space will be sold out at any time." In the end, the ticket cost about 70,000 yuan for the dumplings, "because I also learned that there will be a 'last minute' ticket for the Antarctic ferry ticket, and I was very lucky to grab it at the last moment." According to the information provided by Dumpling, including round-trip air tickets, visas, ferry tickets and other expenses, the Dumpling Antarctic trip cost a total of about 96,000 yuan.
The journey to Antarctica made Dumpling full of emotion: "I think the biggest takeaway should be that it really affects your worldview." When you go to such a place that is completely different from the environment you usually live in, and the environment you live in, it may not look like the earth, and in the extreme cold, you can still see some very cute creatures. They are very free to survive here. You will actually rethink what it means to live a person's life, or what is the way of living. I really can't help but have some deep thoughts like this. ”
"People live in this world to see these beautiful and shocking things. There are many things about the beauty of nature, history, culture, and humanity in the world, which makes me even more convinced to love life and the world. Maybe when I am old, I will think that my life is because I have seen a lot of beautiful nature, people, things and people. In this way, your life will become beautiful. Dumplings finally said this. (Cover News)