What is extreme tourism and why billionaires love it

This Thursday, 29 June, the first commercial flight of the SpaceShipTwo VVS Unity spacecraft, Galactic 01, will make its debut, inaugurating a real tourist business in space. The news comes just days after the US Coast Guard announced the tragic death of the five passengers of the OceanGate submarine, who died during a sightseeing trip to a depth of 3800 meters to explore the wreck of the Titanic. Choosing tourist destinations that are unreachable, or at least notoriously dangerous for humans, seems to be a favorite pastime of billionaires; touching the summit of Mount Everest, exploring the lesser-known places of Antarctica, and now, even observing the Earth from space. It seems impossible to think that a holiday in the shoes of an astronaut could be relaxing, yet the allure of extreme tourism continues to survive any tragedy. 

The voyage of the SpaceShipTwo VVS Unity on Thursday will mainly serve to complete some research, and an almost all-Italian team will be on board: Walter Villadei, Colonel of the Italian Air Force, Angelo Landolfi, Lieutenant Colonel and Physician of the Italian Air Force, and Pantaleone Carlucci, engineer, and researcher at the National Research Council. Having completed their journey, Virgin Galactic's launch program foresees the take-off of Galactic 02 during the first week of August, an experience for private individuals that will take the most daring through a suborbital flight costing $450,000 per ticket - which can already be booked - departing from the New Mexico spaceport. This is quite a difference in price compared to the Titan submarine expedition, which cost the five missing persons $250,000 each, as well as to what is demanded of those who want to venture to the summit of Everest, around $46,000, or to that of K2, up to $39,000. 

The price to pay to be able to access these trips is just as high as the danger of the experience, perhaps one of the very aspects that makes these trips so rewarding for those who manage to access them. In addition to the luxury of being able to afford such an expensive holiday, billionaires love risk; according to the study The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires, published last year by the Institute for Economic Research in Berlin and the University of Münster, a higher tolerance for risk is one of the main traits associated with people with the highest incomes in the world. As the study explains, «narcissism, one of the most pronounced traits in wealthy individuals, is related to greater risk-taking,» a characteristic even more pronounced in self-made millionaires and billionaires, namely those who have acquired record wealth without having inherited it. The study even went so far as to show that «the more self-made and risk-tolerant individuals were, the higher their wealth.» 

Technological advancement has allowed expeditions once for the sole purpose of research to become seemingly safer for humans, expanding the extreme tourism market to the point where it has become a booming niche: according to reports from the International Antarctic Association, from 2014-15 to 2019-20, the total amount of arrivals on the continent of Antarctica doubled from 26 to 55 thousand, bearing in mind that a flight to the South Pole with the South Pole Overnight costs $65,000, despite the fact that you cannot get off the plane once you arrive. Booking a holiday in the world's coldest place is now simple - a cruise on an icebreaker ship such as Ruta40, priced at over 30 thousand euros per person, is practically bookable with a click - but the risks of such an experience are not canceled out by all the comforts that the brochures assure. And the beauty, for those who decide to risk their lives by paying exorbitant sums, is precisely this.