Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
• a greater emphasis on outdoor pursuits in such environments.
While the detailed social and cultural interpretations of such trends are dealt with in detail
by Urry (1988), Poon (1989) illustrates the practical implications of such changes for the
tourism industry. Poon (1989) interprets these changes in terms of a 'shift from an “old
tourism” (e.g. the regimented and standardized holiday package) to a “new tourism”
which is segmented, customized and flexible in both time and space'. In fact some
research on services has analysed the change in society from a 'Fordist' to 'post-Fordist'
stage which has involved a shift in the form of demand for tourist services from a former
pattern of mass consumption 'to more individual patterns, with greater differentiation and
volatility of consumer preferences and a heightened need for producers to be consumer-
driven and to segment markets more systematically' (Urry 1991:52). While recreational
use of the countryside may not exhibit such a high degree of marketing and
reinterpretation to develop novel and profitable experiences, Butler et al. (1998) do point
to the increasing use of rural areas for such purposes which are juxtaposed with more
traditional recreational and tourist uses. Nevertheless, Hummelbrunner and Miglbauer
(1994) support both Poon's (1989) and Urry's (1991) assessments, arguing that these
changes to the demand and supply of tourism services have contributed to the emergence
of a 'new rural tourism'. From a supply perspective, this has manifested itself in terms of
'an increasing interest in rural tourism among a better-off clientele, and also among some
holidaymakers as a growing environmental awareness and a desire to be integrated with
the residents in the areas they visit' (Bramwell 1994:3). This not only questions the need
to move beyond existing concepts such as core and periphery with rural tourism as a
simplistic consumption of the countryside, but also raises the question of how rural areas
are being used to provide tourism and recreational experiences and how businesses are
pursuing market-oriented approaches to the new era of commodification in rural
environments. If the 1990s was a 'new era of commodifying rural space, characterised by
a speed and scale of development which far outstrip farm-based tourism and recreation of
previous eras' (Cloke 1992:59), then a critical review of this process at an international
and national scale is timely, to assess the extent and significance of rural tourism and
recreation in the 1990s and into the new millennium.
CONCEPTUALISING THE RURAL RECREATION-TOURISM
DICHOTOMY
One of the problems within the literature in recreation and tourism is that the absence of a
holistic and integrated view of each area has continued to encourage researchers to draw
a distinction between recreation and tourism as complementary and yet semantically
different activities, without providing a conceptual framework within which to view such
issues. Cloke (1992) overcomes this difficulty by observing that the relationship between
rural areas and tourism and leisure activities has changed, with the activities being the
dominant elements in many rural landscapes which control and affect local communities
to a much greater degree than in the past. Therefore, while a critical debate has occurred
in the tourism and recreational literature in terms of the similarity and differences
between tourists and recreationists, it is the social, economic and spatial outcomes that
are probably the most significant feature to focus on in the rural environment. However,
