Forbidden adventures beckon travelers

When you think of destinations that are off-limits, places like Beijing’s Forbidden City, Cuba or even Roswell, N.M., probably come to mind.

Not Stockerau, Austria. But take a Web site and a few wired expatriates with a taste for adventure, and anything can happen.

The attraction in question is a relatively small patch of national park between the Danube River and Stockerau (pop. 15,664), a quiet town that’s about a 20-minute drive northwest of Vienna. It’s promoted as a weekend destination for hikers, boaters and bikers – the so-called “soft” adventure crowd that accounts for the majority of trips in the adventure segment.

Problem is, not everyone agrees that the place is best suited to softies. I know because I’m related to one of the rogue adventurers.

A bit of background: I lived in Austria from 1970 until 1984, and most of my family is still there. I return to Europe as often as possible to visit them, and when I do, I invariably get a tour of Stockerau and its environs. As a travel commentator, I never expected that one of these trips down Memory Lane would turn into a case study.

But it did. Without getting my younger brother and his friends into trouble, let me try to describe – in protectively vague terms – what kind of hard adventures they engage in. Fishing (largely illegal without an expensive license). Off-road biking (absolutely verboten in the sensitive wetlands). Hunting and trapping (using a crossbow or blowgun).

You haven’t fully experienced this kind of adventure until you’ve been chased through the forest by a park ranger for pointing your bow in the wrong direction. It’s pure adrenalin.

Although Stockerau’s Web site doesn’t overtly promote these activities, it definitely leaves the possibilities open. And to anyone who engages in something that’s forbidden, an opening is all that it takes. While it’s highly unlikely that the Austrian authorities would ever exploit their own natural preserve by opening it to the “hard” adventurers operating with no license and even less common sense, it does raise an interesting question: what if others did?

Could a destination draw more travelers to itself by playing up the “prohibited” angle?

Perhaps. In Maryland, tourism officials are planning to identify and promote locations of the Underground Railroad as tourism destinations. West Virginia’s mysterious and forbidding radio telescopes that search the stars for intelligent life offer an intriguing backdrop for its nascent “hard” adventure suppliers, including its ski resorts. Perhaps no city anywhere exploits its inaccessibility more than Roswell, N.M., the location of UFO crash sites, secret military bases and laboratories where aliens are autopsied, if you believe in that kind of thing.

Wanting to do something that’s not allowed is an impulse as old as human nature itself. From an online marketing perspective, it’s noteworthy that more places haven’t harnessed this innate desire for their own commercial gain. Part of the problem, certainly, is that many of the destination-specific Web sites are often operated by governments that aren’t allowed to shine a spotlight on a “forbidden” aspect of their place.

Still, that shouldn’t stop them from doing it. If there’s something tantalizingly unauthorized about a destination, tourism authorities should encourage others to identify and promote it. That’s because on the Internet, unofficial pages are often just as credible – and sometimes even more believable – than the sanctioned ones.

As Internet users ourselves, we don’t need any surveys to tell us that we make little distinction between a Web site that bills itself as “official” and one that’s obviously self-published. In our search for relevant information, it’s the data the counts. Not necessarily who put it there.

When destination sites begin to understand that, maybe the forbidden will be in fashion.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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