Antarctic Tourism Diversification: Governance, Place-Making, and Values in the Antarctic Treaty System

Antarctic tourism is rapidly growing in scale and scope, with increasing visitor numbers and continued diversification of tourism products, services, and experiences. Current offerings include an ever-expanding range of activity-based experiences and events, day trips to the continent, expeditions aboard luxury cruise vessels, and stays in increasingly sophisticated semi-permanent facilities on land. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights from tourism studies, cultural geography, policy, and legal scholarship, this dissertation investigates how Antarctic tourism diversification unfolds in practice, how it is framed and addressed in Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) policy debates, how it contributes to Antarctic place-making, and how ATS values and principles are and could be enacted in tourism governance. By conceptualizing Antarctic tourism diversification as a process with material, spatial, institutional, and normative implications, this dissertation contributes both empirically and conceptually to Antarctic tourism scholarship and offers policy-relevant insights to support more proactive, coordinated, and value-informed approaches to tourism governance.