Adventure Tourism
Adventure tourism has become the latest craze among young adults ages 18-35. I will attempt to describe some different aspects of adventure tourism, whom it attracts, what it has to offer in terms of career choice and leisure choice, and popular recreation cities. My focus will later be directed towards whitewater rafting, the most popular hard adventure vacation along with kayaking. Adventure tourism tends to bring up thoughts of waterfalls, river rapids, hikes through mysterious jungles, and climbs up rocky mountains. ... Adventure travelers tend to be far more respectful to the environment. Adventure touring is an excellent way to capture the world as it is in its natural beauty. Adventure tourism can be defined in many ways such as adventure travel that matches the natural resources of an area to the growing interest in experiencing that area. ... This type of travel can be broke down into two distinct types of adventure: soft and hard. Hard Adventure tourism is more involved with the natural outdoor settings, and also generates a number of activities in a somewhat challenging environment. The words that could be used to describe this sort of adventure would be risk taking. Soft adventure tourism on the other hand is more of an educational journey filled with excitement and discovery. This type of adventure is often lead by a guide to achieve their experience of the environmental heritage as well as culture. Adventure tourism has been said to be the newest and fastest growing sector of the tourism industry. This type of travel can be a great adventure in learning, experiencing and developing us to be well rounded world travelers. ... ” This Arabian poet was likely an “adventure” tourist. Adventure travel has just developed during the 20th century through traditional outdoor and wilderness recreation which has developed into a broader form of adventure. The activity is the most important feature in this form of tourism where as usually in other traditional forms of recreation it is the setting that provides the main attraction in the special interest travel. Another factor that distinguishes Adventure travel activities from traditional outdoor recreation is “the deliberate pursuit of risk and uncertainty of outcome often referred to as adventure. ... Research taken from the Travel Industry of America Association shows that one half of American adults have taken an adventure vacation sometime in the last 5 years and 16% of the population has taken a hard adventure like whitewater rafting. ... For this industry, a BTR study found that women are the dominant market for overnight, commercial adventure tourism and comprise over 60% of all adventure participants. ... Adventure travel is started to be promoted more often than seen before. One of the many regions who has found to be promoting this type of tourism is ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations). Here tourism resources are heavily dependent on less-developed, natural environments. ... A big impact is said to be made by tourism on the economic bases in this region. I also came across some research which described some very fascinating major components of Adventure tourism. ... Although all of these six components are very important in the adventure tourism spectrum, activity was found to be the most important of the six followed by experience, environment, motivation, risk , and performance.