Selling Arctic: Expert Tips from Jean-Roch De Suzanne, PONANT Explorations

Expedition Leader Jean-Roch De Suzanne, @PONANT Studio, Guillaume Robin

How many times have you’ve been to the Arctic and which specific regions?

I became a naturalist guide back in 2005, on the Galapagos islands. Since when, I have had the opportunity to build experience for our guests in many destinations under different roles and responsibilities. Polar regions are a recent destination for me. I travelled first to Antarctica in 2021 and the Arctic in 2022. Svalbard is my most visited destination in the Arctic, as well as Northeast Greenland. The Canadian Arctic and the Bering Strait are the most remote and least visited region of the Arctic.

Do you have a favourite Arctic destination and why?

The Arctic is so vast, diverse, remote and inaccessible that referring to it as a specific destination is kind of contradictory. It is a nomadic land ruled by the seasonal cycles and wildlife migrations, so no place is twice the same. You may arrive one day to a given site to find a thick and persistent fog, forbidding any exploration. Or you may encounter a pod of belugas along the shore, with curious calves spying on your zodiac.

The Arctic is also a multi-faceted region with many ways to apprehend it. It impacts one’s mind through encounters with wilderness, through majestic moments rooted to your essence, leaving a sensation of vastness and humility. Or it can be sometimes a devastating feeling of overexploitation or environmental degradation as well.

So, I would say more than a favourite destination, it’s a question to be on the right place at the right time, and this is not just simple luck, it’s an attitude of travel.

What was your favourite time during the season and why?

Every season will give a very different perception of the destination, the main changing factor being the ice obviously, but also the light variation, and this include the opportunity to spot Northern lights (depending on the latitude you travel of course).

I believe I prefer to come earlier in the season, when the fjords are still retaining the fast ice, and the night is still profound enough as to offer sky gazing and dim lights. It can be also bitterly cold and very stormy during the early season, and the elements may play against us, so it can become quite frustrating as well. This also what the Arctic is about, an untamed destination. The early season is also an intense moment for birds’ migrations, when the breeding sites are being recolonized. Such an activity is quite astonishing to witness.

What is your favourite thing to do or a favourite place to visit in the Arctic?

My favourite things to do in the Arctic is to explore. This is what the Arctic is about for me. A careful compilation of available data, like ice extension, weather forecast, migration cycles, team experiences, etc… is necessary to take decisions regarding the destination and activities to offer. But intuition is as essential than rational. Being able to “read” the Nature and build an itinerary that in the end will become your guests experience is for me the most fascinating things to do!

Don’t travel to the Arctic expecting to see polar bears. Go to the Arctic to discover a complex environment and decipher its balance and dynamic. The cycle of ice is probably the most fascinating aspect of it, for the time scale window it opens for us. You will then discover such a remote environment is in fact connected to your reality.

And well maybe, yes, a polar bear will visit you.

The most memorable moment you’ve worked/travelled to the Arctic.

You may expect me to share an adventure where we found ourselves among drifting sea ice closing around us, or the perfect tides and ice conditions to reach a site otherwise inaccessible, or a particularly intense encounter with a furtive pod of Narwhals, or a polar bear close encounter maybe. But I must say that my most memorable moments in a natural protected areas have always been a sense of connection, a moment of contemplation that suddenly anchor your whole self to the moment, a deeper understanding of belonging to this earth. It is a very personal sensation and so, hard to describe a feeling, a love for nature says, a crystalline moment of consciousness.

More than an exciting adventure exposing oneself beyond a comfort zone, I think the meaning of going into the polar realm is to acquire a deeper understanding of our dependency on earth ecosystem and reflect on our habits of living.

Your top tips for the travel advisors.

We see too often guests coming with a somewhat biased expectations that may cause frustrations. The marketing offer is full of quite impressive pictures promising exceptional encounters. Those images are real, but it is also essential for our guests understand that this is not an offer, it is a reward.

The Polar region is a destination where the Nature rules and nothing can be taken as granted. An opportunistic approach suits better than a given itinerary, an open and flexible attitude is key to a successful experience.

So, for our customer to live what can be among their most meaningful experience, it is important to create the proper mind setting and convey a sense of exploration. A key recommendation to share with them would be to prepare their voyage and read a few books about the destination as to create their own imaginary and make of this journey a more personal one. This would be a much more creative approach.