White Desert Brings Intrepid Vacationers to Antarctica’s Distant Inside

The attract of Antarctica continues to skyrocket, and longtime polar clothes shop White Desert—a winner in Journey + Leisure‘s 2025 International Imaginative and prescient Awards—is utilizing the continent’s recognition for good. Its new White Desert Basis, which launched in late 2024, is harnessing the corporate’s 20 years of Antarctic experience to broaden analysis and local weather motion each near camp and all over the world.

“Antarctica actually exhibits us how interconnected the world is,” says Rebecca Warne, director for the White Desert Basis. “Local weather change did not begin in Antarctica, it isn’t going to be solved in Antarctica, however it’s the foundation of many world occasions.”

The posh journey firm, based mostly in South Africa, first launched in 2005 to supply vacationers a comfortable resting place between excessive White Continent experiences. Founder and CEO Patrick Woodhead conceptualized the glamping basecamp whereas ready out a four-day storm on a traverse of Antarctica. Even again then, nearly all of White Continent vacationers arrived by cruise ship, witnessing solely the ice’s fringes. He knew intrepid vacationers craved entry to the distant inside, too.

White Desert’s first few tents grew into three separate camps, however the purpose has by no means been about rising vacationer numbers. Every camp welcomes not more than 12 visitors. “Taking very small numbers of vacationers there and doing it in a extremely sustainable manner was necessary to us,” says Woodhead. “That permeated each factor of our infrastructure and the way we function.”

Guests—which complete only a few hundred every November to February season—are handled to the continent’s dramatic surroundings, from frozen waves to large emperor penguin colonies, plus as hygge-infused luxurious (assume heated polar pods, saunas, and personal cooks, in addition to a brand new Wellness Dome on the Whichaway Camp, which opened in 2024).

White Desert grew to become carbon impartial in 2007, and continues to lighten its footprint by eradicating all waste, incorporating renewable power, and utilizing sustainable aviation fuels for the flights between Antarctica and Cape City, the place the journeys originate.

The brand new White Desert Basis builds upon this ecotourism legacy, whereas working inside the firm’s distinctive geographical limitations. “We are able to’t do what many tourism corporations do [to] preserve and preserve the world through which they function,” says Warne, noting most organizations attempt to shield the area. “With Antarctica, we’re mandated to go away it alone.” As an alternative, the brand new basis will sort out local weather change throughout three pillars.

First up: scientific analysis. Greater than 50 international locations help analysis initiatives on Antarctica, but many local weather scientists that aren’t backed by nationwide packages lack the hefty funds to get right here. That’s the place White Desert Basis steps in. Their grants present transportation and logistical help for essential Antarctic analysis, like learning the hundreds of meteorites discovered right here.

International environmental points have catalyzed Antarctica’s local weather issues. That’s why the White Desert Basis’s second pillar of labor goes past the continent. It backs initiatives in South Africa’s Western Cape that restore coastal and ocean habitats, together with seagrasses. These marine ecosystems effectively seize and retailer carbon, and play an necessary position in safeguarding Earth’s future.

Turning curious vacationers into conservationists is the purpose of many Antarctic operators—and with a bunch of visiting scientists, the White Desert Basis is especially poised to make this a actuality. “By connecting scientists and visitors, we might spark an actual change in each mindset and actions,” says Warne. “These scientists can join how necessary Antarctica is, and what it tells us about our previous and our collective future.”