Today’s episode takes you on an exhilarating journey into the world of expedition travel as Rodney is joined by Karl Kannstadter, VP of Content Strategy – Exploration for Signature Travel Network. Together, they delve into the “luxurification” of adventure travel, where rugged exploration meets refined comfort. Karl provides expert insights into the evolving expedition market, from the dynamic contrasts between the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the impact of climate change to the unique weather conditions travelers can expect in polar destinations. They also explore the exciting future of adventure travel, including the possibilities of space tourism. Whether you dream of polar expeditions or seek a deeper understanding of luxury travel’s transformative potential, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice for the modern adventurer.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• [1:40] Karl gives a snapshot of his history of travel
• [3:54] The definition of “luxurification” of adventure travel
• [7:34] The difference between the Artic and the Antarctic and Karl discusses global warming
• [11:35] What weather conditions can you expect in these colder regions
• [18:03] What Karl sees ahead in the expedition market, space travel 
• [22:46] Expeditions into the polar regions

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

• Luxury travel is shifting from traditional opulence to unique, transformative experiences in extraordinary locations. Whether trekking with gorillas in Rwanda or observing polar bears in Manitoba, true luxury lies in exclusivity and connection to nature. Enhanced infrastructure now blends rugged adventure with refined comfort, catering to travelers seeking meaningful journeys.
• Climate change varies globally, with rapid shifts in the Arctic disrupting ice patterns and polar bears adapting their diets. In contrast, Antarctica's effects are slower, likely due to its vast ice-covered landmass, highlighting diverse regional impacts on ecosystems.
• Antarctic expeditions (November–February) bring milder summer temperatures (28°F–38°F), often warmer than winters in Chicago or Toronto. Weather can include winds, snow, or hail, but adaptable teams ensure safety and comfort. Essential gear, like three-in-one parkas and waterproof boots, keeps travelers warm and dry, making Antarctica’s stunning landscapes accessible.

RESOURCES:

Luxury Travelers - Podcast

Luxe Travel - Website

Luxe Travel - Facebook

Luxe Travel - Instagram

Karl Kannstadter - LinkedIn

Signature Travel Network - Website

Signature Travel Network - Facebook

GUEST BIOGRAPHY: 

Karl Kannstadter, VP of Content Strategy – Exploration for Signature Travel Network, brings 37 years of experience in the travel industry on land and sea. He has developed itineraries, led trips worldwide, managed a dive lodge in Fiji, and spent three months in Papua New Guinea. Karl's career spans over 90 countries, with expeditions to the North Pole, Antarctica, the Galapagos, Yemen, Uzbekistan, and the Faroe Islands. His most recent role was Senior Director of Global Expedition Sales for Silversea Expeditions.

So buckle up and prepare for a journey into the lap of luxury. Now your host.

About [00:01:00] exploration travel than anybody that I personally know. He's a part of Signature Travel Network, which is, uh, a consortium of travel providers, travel agencies, travel advisors across the country that do somewhere north of $11 [00:01:15] billion annually in sales. So I'm, I'm thrilled to death, uh, to, to introduce you to my friend Carl Canter, who's the VP of strategy.

Karl Kannstadter: Yeah. I don't know if I'd say it as, as hiding out, but, uh, somebody asked me [00:01:45] one time or somebody suggested one time, you know, a lot of people might think you're running away from something by traveling so much.

And I said, no, I'm running towards something. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm running

Uh, and we'll talk about that later on. But Carl, you've really witnessed an evolution in [00:02:15] expedition travel over the, over the recent five, seven, 10 years, right?

And it was a board, a retired, she wasn't even retired, um, a Russian icebreaker. And they are not built to have passengers. They are not built with stabilizers. They're not built for comfort nor speed. They're built for [00:02:45] crushing ice. And, uh, it was a very, very different experience than the one I had in November of last year, for example, when I took my wife and son on a purpose built luxury expedition ship with, um, [00:03:00] USB C plugs in the toilet, you know, so that God forbid your phone should run out of power while you're sitting on the john.

Rodney George: Well, you not only do the polar regions, you do a lot of other exciting stuff as well. Tell us about the Fiji dive lodge. Thing that you were talking about the other day.

And we had a reef. Right off of our beach, basically, and, um, just some, some of the most [00:04:00] spectacular diving that I've done and smartly, it was so beautiful and you didn't have to go to any significant depth to do it either. So, yeah, I've, I've been fortunate. I've been really blessed to have had a great career and in travel and just to have explored the world.

Karl Kannstadter: Sure. You know, we talk a lot about luxury and I think that term gets overused and misused. And Because I think a lot of people [00:04:45] believe that luxury is necessarily about comfort or about glitz and glam and, and, um, you know, ostentatious displays of wealth and things like that. But what we're finding in the industry is that there is something to be said [00:05:00] about the luxury of place, let's say, or the luxury of access.

But boy, oh [00:05:30] boy, when you get back to the lodge these days, have things ever changed from what it would have been 20 years ago? You know, very, very simple accommodations, Spartan, uh, not much by way of amenities, that sort of thing. These days that has [00:05:45] changed dramatically. So it's, it's kind of that old adage from field of dreams.

And as far as I'm aware, there are no five star [00:06:30] properties in Churchill, Manitoba. It's, you know, you're kind of at the end of the road there. Sure enough, you know, comfortable, clean bathroom, clean linens to sleep on, but nobody would say it's luxury. We know what we would say it's five star, but. The [00:06:45] experience that those folks provide for your clients, for example, Rodney, who want to go see polar bears in Churchill, it's second to none.

Rodney George: Somebody sent me a video that just popped up on my, one of my, uh, Social media feeds this morning and it was a tiny polar bear and he was trying to climb aboard a icebreaker and [00:07:15] they rescued him and had all these guys holding this, holding this polar bear and feeding it.

And I said, at what point in time did his natural instincts kick in that he knows he doesn't like these people and wants to eat them then when he gets hungry?

Karl Kannstadter: Well, that's

Karl Kannstadter: he gets hungry, I saw that video and I hate to burst your bubble, but it's AI. Is it really? Someone generated that.

Rodney George: Oh, you burst him up bubble. I'm sorry. Okay, so what's the main difference and you told me this a long time ago, but I want you to share it with our, with our listeners and viewers, what's the main difference between [00:08:15] the Arctic and the Antarctic? And you gave me a simple description.

Karl Kannstadter: Sure. Um, it's an oversimplification, but, but I like it.

Not true. I was there in April of 2015. And the funniest thing I saw was one of those wooden, wooden signs, you know, with, with arrows pointing. [00:09:00] Every which way. And one says, you know, Tokyo, 14, 000 miles, New York, 8, 000 miles, whatever it is. And it said, The North pole is here and is was crossed out and someone had written in was because [00:09:15] you may be, you and I may be standing on the North pole and our, we've got GPSs that say 90 degrees and we are theoretically we're there, but we're standing on a frozen ice sheet.

Rodney George: Yeah.

We've shifted, so there is no land mass at the North Pole. At the South Pole, in Antarctica, there is a land mass, and it's covered by ice. In some cases, it's up to three miles thick. Three miles? Yeah, five kilometers. [00:10:00]

Is that truly happening? Is it happening at a degree that we should be concerned about?

So it's changing. It's different than what we're used to, what we used to see. Um, yeah, that's certainly, you know, people who spend more time up there than [00:11:00] I do, they're in the Arctic, they're, they're noticing those changes. Um, and the wildlife are adapting as a result. The polar bears in particular are very, very adaptable, so they're changing.

And as I said, it's, it's a land mass that's covered in ice. Um, it's not as noticeable and it doesn't appear to be happening as quickly from what I've gathered from, from some of my [00:11:45] friends that work there.

Ice sheets, three and a half miles thick, obviously that required a great deal of cold weather to form that. But at the time of year that you actually visit those regions, what can they expect? Great point.

I just don't work for them anymore. And I was in Chicago, for example, in January, making a pitch and showing my slides, I would tell them [00:12:30] and I would show them. It's colder. Right now in Chicago or in Minnesota or in Toronto, where I am, then it is in Antarctica right now. So the season when we travel there, when, when the expedition ships head there is November, [00:12:45] December, January, and February.

They'll say, whatever we had, what a plan A is out the window, we're now going to plan B, plan C, plan D. They won't [00:13:15] take you outside or they won't, schedule, uh, an exploration or an excursion when the weather's really, really foul. But typically you're going to get that range where it's say four degrees below freezing, four degrees above freezing, something, something along those [00:13:30] lines.

You can wear each one of those layers independently, or you zip them together. And now you've got this pretty heavy parka. They'll all instruct you to use the layering system. So we're long Johns and then an insulating layer, and then the parka [00:14:15] or a pair of ski pants or snow pants on top of that. And then you can.

You would never, ever experience cold. I took a friend from Brazil to Antarctica [00:14:45] three years ago. And at the end of it, I asked him, did you feel cold once during this trip? And he didn't.

Does luxury always have to be about comfort and service?

And so [00:15:30] my family and I, or my son and I will go canoeing and camping. Luxury for me is having fresh meat on day three, uh, you know, on a camping trip. So everyone's definition of luxury is a little bit different. But, you know, [00:15:45] using the example of the mountain gorillas, using the example of the polar bears, to have that sort of access to creatures like that, to be that close and have a hot meal and have a warm bed and a clean [00:16:00] bathroom that you can use, a lot of people consider that a luxury.

So only if I

Rodney George: put

When they park those things because they found a couple of polar bears, the polar bears are curious and they slowly make their way over. And believe it or not, we give off a scent, doesn't matter if everyone showered and put on deodorant that morning, we're giving off a [00:17:00] scent that they find interesting and don't make their way over.

And you, there was a platform on the back of this. It was an old school bus [00:17:30] and he and I stepped onto the back of the platform or the back of the bus onto this platform, but six feet in the air. And despair was sniffing around, sniffing around, sniffing around. And all of a sudden the bear got up on its hind legs and he put his paws on the railing.[00:17:45]

It wasn't in focus. I was too close. So did I have a chocolate on my pillow that night? No. Did I five star dining? No. [00:18:15] Was it the best red wine in the world? No. I probably had a beer out of a can. Um, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything because I was in that, that place at that time and had that experience.

So that was a luxury to me.

Karl Kannstadter: amazing news that came out of Florida. Um, uh, [00:18:45] space perspective. So yeah, there's a company. I had her on the show two weeks ago.

It's, it's a hydrogen bloomer. Yeah. Yeah. Technology, which I know comes with a bit of a stigma attached to it, but it's been [00:19:30] used very successfully for, for taking up Uh, cargo loads and, and I think satellites or low earth orbit satellites and things like that for decades and decades and NASA and, and the Navy and all sorts of, of [00:19:45] organizations have been using this technology.

So they have built a capsule. That holds eight people and a pilot, and it takes, it slowly rises, I think at 12 miles an hour. 12

Rodney George: miles an hour is what she said.

So it's a six hour experience. Uh, you splash down in the ocean and their custom built [00:20:15] ship is there to pick you up and retrieve the capsule and bring everybody back on board. And you've spent two hours at, at that, at Apogee at a hundred thousand feet, looking at the curvature of the earth, unlike some of the other [00:20:30] experiences that, that people can purchase these days to have a space experience.

[00:21:00] And, uh, the other big news in the last few weeks is that, uh, Richard Branson, who has his own experience with, uh, balloons and holds a number of world records with balloons and balloon travel is going to co pilot the first manned flight, which [00:21:15] they think will happen next year, 2025.

Rodney George: She said late next year.

Karl Kannstadter: the most, for me, that's the single most exciting thing going on in, in expedition or exploration travel these days.

And so when she, she was talking, she was kind of a little bit of, uh, you know, I've been, I've been here. I've done that. I said, I've got something tonight that you've never done that you're going to want to do. And so I showed the video, uh, [00:22:15] I showed a little bit of our podcast from a couple of weeks ago.

Karl Kannstadter: Yeah. It, it, it's a lot of money, um, for a relatively short time for that experience. But my goodness, uh, you know, the other ones that are currently being offered are more and it's a shorter amount of time that you're spending at [00:22:45] space.

Rodney George: and on the other, with your feet still somewhat on the earth, what's going on in that in that segment, as far as luxury expeditions to the polar regions, I know there's a [00:23:15] Um, it seems like every few months there's a new expedition class ship coming.

So how's that?

S., but they operate in the polar regions and all over the world. [00:23:45] They built a luxury, uh, icebreaker built as a cruise ship. So four, four guests, uh, called the Commandant, the Commandant Charcot, which must've been a French.[00:24:00]

There's the geomagnetic North pole. There are something like three poles. There's a pole of inaccessibility, which is the furthest point from. Inhabitation and I'm, [00:24:30] I'm drawing a blank on, on the other, uh, but they've done that this coming winter in February and March or January and February, they're going into the frozen St.

So you, you feel like you're in this glass shoe box maybe, but, but a swimming pool. And so you're swimming, they're looking through the glass to the frozen ocean, uh, behind you as the, as the [00:25:15] ship passes. broke the ice on its way to the north pole. So that I find pretty exciting as well.

Rodney George: And then there's a Antarctica in particular.

There's, they're now flying part of the way there, I believe. Yeah, there's a south

An air force equipped with the, the aircraft needed to land in Antarctica. Many of them will piggyback on the U S or piggyback on with the Brits because [00:26:00] they have that technology in those aircraft, but a lot of them will work with this company out of the U S called ALE, I think, uh, ALE. Antarctica logistics, something or other.

They will take off from Cape Town, head due south. They've got a blue ice runway set up and they've set up some geodesic domes. Uh, so it's, it's glamping in Antarctica, if you will.

So we're going to go back and try the [00:27:00] old traditional thing where you gun it out across the, uh, Sir Francis Drake passage there. Yep. Take the drugs.

Uh, haven't been, hasn't been decided yet. Okay. Um, it was a ship that was newly built. She's only a few years old, state of the art [00:27:30] stabilization. And we were going through some pretty rough seas. I think the captain said eight meter swells. So, you know, that's in the neighborhood of 25 feet.

Rodney George: Yeah.

Karl Kannstadter: And I was up on the 10th deck because normally you want to be low.

Rodney George: Well, the ships have stabilizers and they're faster ships than a few years ago, so they can get across in 36 to 40 hours [00:28:15] as opposed to two and a half or three days. So that makes a difference.

It's dramatic, right? If it bleeds, it leads kind of thing. If someone shot a video of the Drake passage when it was flat, calm, when it was glass, which it can be, [00:28:45] I've been, I've done it. No one's going to watch that video. Yeah. It's not interesting. So, you know, you talk to some people and I, I heard one guy who works for an expedition cruise line and he's the head of their expedition department and he put it this way.

Uh, the shake is what you would expect riding the high seas anywhere in the world. And the quake is only 30 percent of the time and they avoid it. [00:29:30] You know, the, the, the captain or the expedition leader will look at the weather before leaving South South America or before leaving Antarctica to head back to South America, they'll look at the weather.

We're going to let that blow through and come in after it. So they, they, they [00:30:00] have ways of mitigating that. And, um, like I said, if you're even remotely prone, if you get seasick in the bathtub, take the drugs. It's, and it's not your mom's, uh, you know, anti nausea medication that just knocked you out and made [00:30:15] everybody sleep through it these days.

The new medications are really, really good and the ship's doctor will have them or to be absolutely sure, speak to your physician before you go in.

You almost need motion, sickness medications in there just to watch the show. I mean, I don't know if you made it over there and saw it or not, but it was, it was absolutely, [00:30:45] I can't tell you how many times I've seen the Eagles. I've seen them three times this year, but to see them in that environment was the most phenomenal concert I've ever been to.

And I've been to hundreds of concerts in my lifetime.

Rodney George: Yeah.

So we really appreciate you being here and [00:31:30] sharing your incredible knowledge of, of those regions of the world with us. And we'll see you next time. And just remember as you go on your way, folks, uh, enjoy yourself because it truly is later than you think. Bye for now. Bye [00:31:45] bye. Thanks, Rudy.