Adventure Tourism

Meanings, experience and learning

Steve Taylor, Peter Varley, Tony Johnston, Steve Taylor, Peter Varley, Tony Johnston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136318979
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industria dell'ospitalità e del turismo
• Index: Business

Adventure tourism is an increasingly widespread phenomenon, appealing to an expanding proportion of the population who seek new destinations and new experiences.

This timely, edited volume offers new theoretical perspectives of this emerging subset of Tourism. it uses philosophical and cutting edge empirically grounded research to challenge existing thinking and develop the conceptual framework underpinning definitions of adventure, interrogating the adventure tourism experience and further building upon recent advances in adventure education. The book brings together adventure literature from range of disciplines and applies it to focused study of Adventure Tourism. By doing so it significantly furthers understanding and moves forward this development of this area of Tourism.

This significant volume is written by leading academics in the area, and will be valuable reading for all those interested in Adventure Tourism.

Part II Delivering the adventure experience

Steve Taylor

DOI: 10.4324/9780203120095-7

Adventurous experiences can encompass a range of motivations, from the obvious seeking of thrills to the more subtle pleasures associated with mental catharsis. This section examines aspects of how these adventurous experiences are delivered. Adventure tourism is often cited as one of the fastest growing tourism sectors – the interface between the experience provider and the customer is critical in terms of both delivering a great service and encouraging more people to add excitement, even if ephemeral, to their lives.

The core hypothesis of Tristan Semple’s chapter proposes that many people’s motivations for taking part in adventurous pursuits stem not from an accepted desire to take risks or face uncertainty, but from other deeper, intrinsic and ostensibly less likely motivations, such as the desire for loneliness, exposure to unforgiving environments or discomfort. In exploring these practices, Tristan introduces the concept of fast and slow adventure, through which elements of adventurous typologies can be examined, as well as how and why people choose to partake in these activities as a way of both developing and enacting their narratives and constructing their self.

The changing nature of many commercialised adventure activities forms the focus of Simon Beames’ and Peter Varley’s chapter. Rather than leisure settings merely being places where people go to recreate, many are now presented as integrated, multifaceted leisure arenas, where the recreation experience is augmented by, perhaps even usurped by, a range of associated products and services. Using Scottish adventure centres to illustrate this trend, the authors examine how these operations conform to Bryman’s (1999) concept of ‘Disneyization’, from the hybridised nature of consumption practices to the associated merchandise sales that so often accompany contemporary commercialised adventure experiences.

In order to better understand the adventure tourism market in South Africa, Melissa Janette Lötter et al. examine a range of key demographic variables that help to define the sector in Pretoria. Although the difficulties inherent in defining the adventure tourism market are acknowledged, understanding the characteristics and preferences of potential customers is central to developing products and services that will appeal to these target markets. It is by segmenting the potential market, the authors argue, that adventure tourism businesses can position themselves and target their marketing activities much more effectively.

Finally, Antonie Bauer takes a look at the Irish adventure tourism sector, and assesses the service quality provided by the companies operating in the sector. Service quality is a subject that has received a great deal of scholarly attention; the majority of academic articles have confirmed the link between the level of service quality and the consumer experience, and the consequent purchasing intentions of those customers. Researching the level of service provided by 70 adventure providers in southern Ireland illustrates how the adventure sector operates and what its strengths and weaknesses are, as well as an insight into the nature of entrepreneurship in what may be perceived as a lifestyle tourism sector.

5 The semiotics of slow adventure

Narrative and identity

Tristan Semple

DOI: 10.4324/9780203120095-8

Introduction

This chapter extends the notion of adventure as a subjective (Weber, 2001) and socially constructed (Beedie and Hudson, 2003) practice by investigating the relationship between adventure narratives, the performance of adventure as leisure and the processes by which identity is constructed. The notion of self or selfhood is engaged with as a creative project which is externally realised through symbolic acts and internally shaped by imaginative devices. Moreover, the performances, thoughts and feelings which constitute adventurous leisure, are presented as emerging in direct relation to the motifs and meanings embedded within certain narratives. The notion of slow adventure is introduced to help characterise this distinct sub-genre which articulates a particular constellation of emotions and semiotics.

In extending the notion of the ‘self’ as a raft of co-constructed selves (Goffman, 1959) and identity as a developmental project (Baumeister, 1986) the literature has proposed that the performance of tourism and leisure is set against a backdrop of identity experimentation (Desforges, 2000; Neumann, 1992). As a strand within this theoretical web, this chapter builds upon the work of Moscardo (2010) and brings greater focus to the central proposition that the tourist experience is concerned with the enactment, creation and recreation of stories. Moscardo’s framework (2010: 51) will be extended to include the influence of archetypal roles, mythologies, cultural scripts and narratives. Furthermore, McAdams’s (1985) concept of life chapters and Singer and Salovey’s (1993) theory of self defining memories are incorporated to explore the tripartite relationship between narrative, identity and adventure experiences.

(Hi)story

The history of the story is one which has incited wars, founded religions, shaped the contours of societies and cemented their norms, immortalised heros and ensured the passage of knowledge from generation to generation (Ransome, 2010). The etymological roots of narrative and story (Latin narrare, ‘to recount’ and the Latin historia, ‘to inquire’) demonstrate a close and complex relationship with memory, the passage of knowledge and the construction of reality. This cyclic relationship is essentially creative, whereby the past is selectively and imaginatively engaged with by (re)constructive recollection (Barclay, 1996; Thompson et al., 1996). Put simply, the past is remade by the act of remembering and retelling. Similarly, the present is also contingent, held together and given form by our journey from, and understanding of, the past (Geertz, 1973). Whilst the material culture of architecture, tools and sculpture provide some concrete form of continuity, it is through stories that meaning and understanding have evolved through the generations.

The particular types of narrative which constitue the shared story: legend, allegory, myth, fable, saga, epic, fairy tale, parable and chronicle all depend upon an important and profound verisimilitude or ‘imaginative truth’ (Green, 1980: 52). That is to say that however fantastical the embellishment and climactic events of the story, there must remain a kernel of truth at the centre. Thus the portrayed feelings of even fictional protagonists: the lover, the risk taker, the aggressor, the victim, the libertine, provide society with important reference points. Narratives thus provide ‘knowledge structures’ (Adaval and Wyer, 1998: 208) which act as conceptual maps, facilitating existential navigation. It is apparent then that many of the rules which construct our shared reality are contained within the ‘official literature of a nation’ (Inglis, 2000: 75) as well as its informal transactions and artistic projects. Consequently, individuals have access to a cultural library from which they can both borrow and adopt: as such, a reservoir of identities and archetypal roles (see Campbell, 1990, 2008; Jung, 1990).

Wherever there are humans there are stories (McAdams, 2001: 114) and it would appear that stories have been central to both the survival of the human species and to our understanding of the world (Cobl...