Book review of "Tourism and Change in Polar Regions: climate, environment and experience" by C. Michael Hall, Jarkko Saarinen (Eds.), Routledge, London, UK

[Extract] For the armchair tourist, the immediate perception of arctic regions is of ice and rock, the setting for heroic endeavours by the early explorers. The premise of Tourism and Change in Polar Regions: Climate, Environment and Experience is that these are complex areas in which much change is occurring, and tourism is examined as a vector for ecosystem change. In 1981 only 855 visitors to Antarctica were recorded, in 2009 there are estimated to have been 40,000, far exceeding the number of scientists stationed there. In 2007, there were a total of over 5 million trips to the Arctic and subarctic, Alaska received 1,961,500 visitors, Northwest Territories had 63,461 visitors and Iceland 777,000. This book anticipates further growth in Polar tourism, and identifies it as an important force for change in what is described as "this imagined place with its associated images and history that acts as a major driver for the desire to travel to the far north and south." (p32