Adventure Tourism: The New Frontier

Citation

Fynn, P. (2004), "Adventure Tourism: The New Frontier", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 144-144. https://doi.org/10.1108/09596110410520043

Adventure Tourism: The New Frontier highlights and begins to address a gap in the literature between perspectives on outdoor education, and the mainstream tourism industry. Modest in their aspirations for their text, the authors are deservedly ambitious in throwing down the gauntlet for further academic attention and research into this diverse, dynamic and increasingly significant niche tourism sector.

The book is written in an accessible but academic style and well referenced, and will support students making the transition from operational to academic perspectives on adventure tourism provision, and from further education into undergraduate studies.

While much of the book is concerned with highlighting the breadth and scale of adventure tourism, and the need for further research, the inclusion of a rich selection of models, theories and case studies from a wide range of sources enables the text to maintain its academic integrity and gives the text much broader applicability than tourism, with relevance to the retail, entertainment, and indoor activity sectors, and to the contexts of marketing and consumer behaviour.

Noting in their preface that the book “raises far more questions than answers”, the authors’ first chapter quickly engages their reader in the debate over interrelationships in the leisure, recreation and tourism field and the difficulties which arise in attempts to define and categorise adventure tourism. The general approach throughout is one which encourages critical engagement and wider reading, in which the comprehensive bibliography serves the reader well.

In a clear commitment to produce a text “without geographical boundaries” but also without disciplinary boundaries the authors’ examination of the adventure tourist is grounded in research which spans tourism, leisure, sport and outdoor education. The resultant third chapter introduces consumer psychology in a very accessible format which makes a substantive general contribution to understanding of the leisure, sport and tourism consumer and encourages readers at all levels to investigate further.

The consideration of risk management is similarly eclectic drawing on discussions from service management, tourism, sport and outdoor education to provide a generic framework which can be applied beyond adventure tourism operations, including for example events and attractions management. With global tourism and leisure proven highly susceptible to terrorism, high profile accidents, and international health issues, the chapter provides a model for the inclusion of risk and crisis management in more general tourism texts.

The growing sector of “artificial environment adventure” in the closing chapters, is included both for its own understanding, and for the juxtaposition of the “artificial” with adventure experiences in natural environments which are nonetheless managed, commodified or artificially aided. Whether “artificial environment adventure” can truly be considered “adventure tourism” is a question the readers must ponder for themselves.

In offering a text which seeks to present “as holistic a view as possible” the authors support a wide range of disciplines above and beyond the tourism arena, including leisure and recreation, sports management, outdoor education and events management. An essential library reference text this book will, in my view, become the catalyst for further research, as the authors intend.