12:11 21/01/2011
RIA Novosti commentator Marina Selina
Can Chernobyl become a popular tourist destination? The Ukrainian government thinks so. It plans to offer regular tours to Chernobyl, and hopes to attract more than just extreme tourists looking for an adventure. Eschatologists and anyone longing for a taste of the Soviet past are also welcome.
Ukrainian tour operators are anticipating a healthy flow of tourists, but it is too early to tell if this notorious disaster site has the makings of tourist attraction. Many questions remain. Can visitors' safety be guaranteed? Will the massive investments needed in infrastructure materialize? While we wait for those answers, nature is gradually reclaiming this impressive site where time stood still.
Chernobyl's prospects
Those who visit Chernobyl today say it's like travelling back in time. Within a few hours of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in April 1986, the government evacuated all 50,000 residents of the neighboring town of Pripyat. The abandoned streets, schools, and Soviet-era department stores have remained intact in the intervening 25 years. Tour operators expect that this ghost town frozen in time and the wreckage of the reactor encased in a concrete sarcophagus will make an indelible impression on tourists.
Tourism in Chernobyl is not an entirely novel ideal; several tour operators already offer excursions to the area. But now it has attracted the attention of the government, and that could make a huge difference.
Last December, Ukraine's emergencies minister, Viktor Baloga, who accompanied Helen Clark, chief of the UN Development Program, on her visit to Chernobyl, proposed that regular tours to Chernobyl begin in January 2011. Ms. Clark supported the idea, seeing it as an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of the tragedy and of the importance of nuclear safety. She could see the economic potential of Chernobyl despite - or because of - its bleak history.
The UN official does have a point. In 2009, Forbes rated Chernobyl the world's most exotic tourist destination. It drew some 7,000 visitors that year.
As the host of the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, Ukraine is preparing for an influx of international tourists. It is these tourists that Ukraine hopes to entice with trips to Chernobyl.
Ukrainians themselves have little interest in visiting the disaster site. "The majority of people here are more concerned about practical issues, such as benefits for the rescuers and the victims of the accident," says Ukrainian political analyst Alexei Poltorakov, who sees foreigners and young people who are into extreme tourism as the target market.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Article and Picture from http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20110121/162233898.html)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Toxic tours of Chernobyl have the potential to make tourists aware of the importance of nuclear safety by providing visitors a first hand encounter with Chernobyl, the most striking example of nuclear energy gone wrong. Unfortunately, based on the description of the article, I am inclined to believe that the main reason that the Ukrainian government put together an official Chernobyl tour was to generate profit for the region. As a result, the Chernobyl disaster is exoticized as an eerie relic from the Soviet Union of old. Exoticizing Chernobyl is exactly the opposite of what Pezzullo would recommend. Rather than constructing an imagined community to whom visitors can identify, exoticizing these events causes visitors to disassociate. One way to remedy these issues is by appointing tour guides who are Chernobyl survivors. This would allow the tragedy of Chernobly to be told from the perspective of a personally narrative, rather than as an historical event.
Brian Goldenberg
No comments:
Post a Comment