BEIJING: Chinese engineers have designed the country’s first tourist submersible equipped to venture as deep as 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) below the ocean surface, giving eventual new momentum to the luxury travel industry.
Engineers at the China Ship Scientific Research Centre in Wuxi, a city west of Shanghai, plan to build a prototype before the end of the year and enter commercial operation by 2030 for as many as four passengers per trip, state-run media outlets said this week.
Key components including the submersible’s panoramic viewport – one of the hardest parts to design on a deep-sea submersible – have been developed already, China Daily said, quoting research centre director Ye Cong.
China has dozens of tourism submersibles in use for depths of up to about 20 metres, suitable for tours in reservoirs, lakes and coastal waters, China Daily reported. Underwater vehicles at greater depths must withstand higher external water pressure.
The research centre, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corp., has also developed the cutting-edge Jiaolong and Deep Sea Warrior deep-sea submersibles for scientific exploration, making the tourism vehicle its latest effort to advance civilian access to the deep seas.
The new vehicle would join submersibles for depths of 1,000 metres or more made by overseas brands Deep Rover, Triton and U-Boat Worx as long ago as 1985.
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The Chinese vehicle would appeal to a “niche group” of tourists, said Steven Zhao, CEO of the travel agency China Highlights.
“There should be a market for it,” he said. “The key is to see the price and level of safety.”
Ticket prices usually range from about US$150 per person for trips closer to the ocean surface to several thousand US dollars per head for deeper dives.
Safety would weigh on tourists’ decisions because of past accidents, Zhao said.
In 2023, five people died on the Titan tourist submersible off the coast of Canada on a voyage to see the wreck of the Titanic, and in March last year six Russian nationals died on a tourist submarine near the Red Sea coast of Egypt.
However, the Titan’s loss won’t hold back “extreme” tourism, a researcher told Business Insider in 2023.
Some travellers may reconsider a deep sea dive after the incident, but they will be replaced by others because of “latent demand”, said Adele Doran, principal lecturer in adventure tourism and recreation at UK-based Sheffield Hallam University.
The China Ship Scientific Research Centre director was quoted as saying many local tourism departments and travel agencies have so far expressed their interest in the deep-sea vessel. - South China Morning Post
