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Adventure tourism in places like Mongolia is becoming more popular.
In 2001, a British man named Tom Morgan decided to host an extreme car race. It would start in Britain and end in what he thought was the world’s most difficult destination for most people to reach: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, more than 5,500 miles away.
He called it the Mongol Rally. Participants had to drive the worst car they could find, avoid any planning and have as much fun as possible. Only six cars raced the first year. But interest grew as people began to talk about the rally online.
“It’s gone ballistic,” Morgan said. More than 2,000 teams are on the wait-list to join the next Mongol Rally.
The growing popularity of the race is one example of interest in trips to remote destinations. Adventure travel companies and insurance providers are reporting record sales this year. “We’ve never been busier,” said Michael Pullman, head of marketing for Wild Frontiers, an adventure travel company. Global Rescue, a company that offers emergency rescues to clients anywhere in the world, said consumer sales were 36 percent higher last year than in 2019 (the last year before the pandemic).
The companies say their clients are skipping Bali or Santorini in favor of destinations with less tourism infrastructure. The number of visitors to Antarctica has more than tripled in the last decade. Nepal granted a record number of permits to climb Mount Everest this year. And car rental companies in Mongolia sold out of S.U.V.s this summer, as I discovered during a road trip across the country.
Experts attribute the surging interest, in part, to pandemic restrictions and precautions that kept people at home. After Covid lockdowns, people have been eager to travel far. “People want to feel a sense of freedom again,” Max Muench, a co-founder of the travel company Follow the Tracks, said.
They also have a sense that time is precious and they should cross off bucket-list items, Pullman said. Wild Frontiers has seen more interest in places like Mongolia, Namibia and Uzbekistan, where bookings are up 150 percent compared with 2019.
Social media is also responsible, experts say. Instagram is filled with posts advertising foreign destinations. The posts are social currency, conferring status on users who share images from remote places.
“People know their posts will be the envy of the neighborhood,” Dan Richards, Global Rescue’s chief executive, said. “So they’re going to Bhutan instead of buying a BMW.”
Some governments see the surging interest in adventure tourism as an economic opportunity for their countries. They have invested in social media marketing campaigns to bring in even more visitors. The Mongolian government has invited influencers to come and post videos of the country’s verdant valleys, Caribbean-blue lakes and orange sand dunes.
But by bringing in more tourists, the governments endanger their countries’ reputations as remote destinations. While tourists bring their wallets, spurring economic development, they can also bring pollution and destruction to environments and social changes to communities.
“The country is changing very rapidly,” said Breanna Wilson, a travel expert in Mongolia. “It’s not going to be this Wild West for much longer.”
Read more about the rise of adventure tourism in Mongolia here.
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Like, what is the meaning of life?
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Lauren Jackson is a writer for The Morning newsletter, based in London. More about Lauren Jackson
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