Adventure Tourism: What is it, why is it popular?
A mountain biker tackling a mountain trail
Adventure tourism is described as a tourism trip that includes at least two of the following three elements - physical activity, the natural environment, and cultural immersion. It often involves risk and some skill from the tourist. Adventure tourism is a very large tourism segment and consists of many niche markets. Within the sector, there is an important distinction between soft and hard adventure travel.
Two paddleborders enjoying a calm mountain lake
Soft adventure travel is relatively safe and hardly requires skills and experience. Some examples include backpacking, birdwatching, camping, canoeing, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, kayaking, safaris, sailing and surfing or papddleboarding.
Hard adventure travel is riskier and requires more skills and experience. Examples include safaris, caving, rock climbing and trekking.
There is very often a cross-over with the Action or Extreme Sports sector. While there is not necessarily any tourism element to the latter, there very often is, and they both challenge participants to go beyond their comfort zone.
Rock climbing: Not for those who wish to remain within their comfort zone!
There are many benefits
There are many reasons why adventure tourism is good for you, and why the market has grown in recent times. In terms of the benefits for well-being, the World Expeditions website lists nine:
Time outdoors reduces stress. Research has shown that nature experiences, even of a short duration reduce stress.
Nature makes exercise easier. It can’t be much easier to get on a bike or go for a forest walk. There is a spectrum as well, that goes right the way to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Nature can rejuvenate the soul. Especially living in the city, it is too easy to lose touch with the smaller things that make a difference – for example hearing the call of the lark at dawn when out wild camping.
It can give a sense of accomplishment. This is especially true if you have set yourself target in advance. That sense of ‘Yes! I did it!’ is worth more than money than buy!
It increases self-awareness. Ironically, stepping into the unknown, taking a certain level of risk, can leave the participant more relaxed as a result.
It can make you smarter. One research study carried out with a control group performed brain scans before and after exercise. The results showed across the group that the participants displayed greater and more focused activity in the prefrontal cortex after exercise than they did before.
You can forge new friendships. Adventure travel can often involve spending long periods of time at extremely close quarters, and you may well rely on each other to overcome obstacles. This time together and sense of joint achievement can be the basis for forming very close friendships – ones that will last for life.
You can learn new skills. It matters not what you learn. You could learn orienteering skills, how to cook local produce, even the basics of a foreign language! Learning something new will form part of the adventure tourism holiday, which will be especially appealing to those who like to go outside their comfort zone.
You can know you’re making a difference if you travel ethically. This of course applies to all tourism, but especially to adventure tourism, as environmentally friendly travel (e.g., cycling) will very likely form part of the package itself.
Why Is It Growing?
So why is this sector growing in popularity? Alex Stickley, at Adventure Bucket List connects it with the rise in the popularity of action and extreme sports. As already mentioned, they both involve going outside your comfort zone. The question is merely to what extent. This ties in with the rapid growth of technology, which means that means lessons in these sports are available on YouTube, and ‘bragging rights’ photos are available on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other medium.
Change in our relationship with nature: in the past, nature was viewed as something that had to be tamed, to be conquered. As Stickley has observed, this has fortunately changed and that today’s adventure tourist has, above all a desire to see, observe, be at one with the beauty of nature, rather than conquer it.
Greater access to remote areas: many tourists today tourist will want to get right away from the ‘madding crowd’, and for every tourist who wants to sign for a luxury cruise, there is likely to be another who wants to get away from it all, go wild camping, or fishing in the middle of the outback. This is made all the easier as we can learn about anywhere in the world via online tour guides, so it is possible to be at least a little bit clued up in advance.
‘Narcissism and The Selfie Generation’: Stickley refers to what he calls ‘GoPro Narcissism’.[1] The need to push personal limits has always been there and it is human nature to invent ever new ways to push this to the limit. The world would be a boring place without such imagination; what is new is the desire to share the action
footage on social media. The bragging rights, shared on Facebook or YouTube, earned by your bungee jump from the Europa Bridge in Austria, are worth a thousand times any photo snap or story told when you get home afterwards, and, done well, it may even go viral! The self-affirmation involved in sharing such footage is obvious. There is no doubt the adventure tourism market will continue to grow.
The CBI advises companies who want to enter this sector to focus on a specific niche market. It is easier to distinguish yourself from your competitors and attract a specific target group. Inform yourself about the niches available in tourism, to be able to make a clear choice. CBI offers an infographic, which gives a clear overview on all segments and niche markets in tourism. This is a good place to start.
[1] GoPro is the brand name of a type of extreme sports camera, the type that snowboarders typically attach to their helmets in order to get the most extreme footage of their exploits, including any crashes. Hence the term GoPro Narcissism is taken to mean roughly ‘a complete indifference to danger displayed by those who engage in extreme sports.’
