London, Troy Collings, the head of the first budget travel agency to North Korea, has died of a heart attack at the age of 33, a media report said on Friday.
The BBC report said that Collings, who was from New Zealand, was the co-founder and Managing Director of Young Pioneer Tours (YPT) – an agency which focused on younger tourists who wanted to travel to the secretive country.
Driven by the goal of making visiting North Korea affordable, the company had a big impact on tourism to the North.
Collings died last week, the company said in a statement on Friday.
“Troy was instrumental in establishing Young Pioneer Tours as one of the leading travel companies for North Korea,” the BBC quoted the statement as saying.
“We here at YPT have lost a visionary and a true pioneer to the travelling industry. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know or to be led on a tour by Troy have lost a dear friend,” it added.
Collings had co-founded the company with Gareth Johnson in 2008.
The agency’s packages range from visiting the capital, to the Pyongyang Marathon, to tours through the countryside.
“If it were not for the budget pricing model which YPT pioneered then many young people would never have had the chance to visit the North Korea,” Chad O’Carroll, managing director of North Korea specialist website NK News told the BBC.
“These are tours which in some cases – such as my own – played a major role in catalysing a long-term interest in focusing on the country.”
The company came into the spotlight in 2016 after one of its customers, American student Otto Warmbier, was arrested in Pyongyang for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda sign and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He was returned to the US in a coma and died a week later.
Besides North korea, the company also offers other tours off the beaten track, including Chernobyl in Ukraine or East Timor in Asia.
