Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
approach' when tourist requirements and expectations are the focus of the niche tourism
marketing approach.
Micro niche tourism markets mentioned in research have included photographic tourism,
geotourism, youth tourism, faith tourism, gay tourism, dark tourism, genealogy tourism, gastro-
nomic tourism, wellness tourism, whisky tourism, bicycle tourism, slum tourism, educational
tourism, volunteer tourism, battlefi eld tourism, adventure tourism, gaming tourism, wildlife/
safari tourism, agritourism, culinary tourism, diaspora tourism, drug tourism, ecotourism, geo-
tourism, health tourism, literary tourism, pro-poor tourism, rural tourism, social tourism and
much more (Novelli 2005; Papathanassis 2011; Robinson
et al
. 2011). Such broad clustering
is helpful but often deceiving. It helps with facilitating promotional plans, targeted marketing,
estimating numbers and creating appropriate price points. However, many micro-niches
remain largely underexplored (usually those that don't promise profi tability), while other
'written about' niches go unchallenged, with little in the way of a balanced corpus of research
and literature surrounding many, except by those eager to structure them as growth markets,
even if such analysis leading to that conclusion is based on derived or short-term demand.
Employed labels and typologies that suggest market niche participants share similar different
traits can be deceiving, given it is inadequate to label anyone an 'ecotourist' just because they
visit a protected area or label anyone who stays in a backpacker hostel a 'backpacker', niches
and their participants often engaging in very different practices for very different reasons.
A label such as 'adventure tourism' may encompass hundreds of activities, whilst other labels
simply overlap so much as to make any understanding of the participants' needs diffi cult
(i.e. war tourism, battlefi eld tourism, military tourism, disaster tourism). Such labels also do not
address whether various 'soft' or more 'serious' participants exist within any given niche,
with labels often little more than 'adjectival tourism' (all forms of tourism that have an
adjective in front of them). Such labels may also be driven by conceptual research (i.e. existential
tourism, experiential tourism). That said, a growing academic corpus investigating niche
tourism from demand and supply-side perspectives, and incorporating other variables such as the
media, has established niche tourism beyond a list of 'instances, case studies and variations'
(Franklin and Crang 2001: 5). Research on demand systems (i.e. level of involvement,
interest and fi nancial situation) and the supply system (i.e. tourism places/destinations, tourist
products) suggests that when you combine all these different niches, it rivals the mass market in
size and span.
Marketing
The persuasive discursive context generated by a tourism-industrial complex is primarily based
on scale economies, low prices, branding and saturation mass marketing in traditional tourism
markets. It is a top-down approach that may be applied to a society at large or through (large)
market segmentation. The more specialized, fl exible and customer tailored offerings inherent to
niche tourism, however, are dependent on understanding motivations, demographics, buying
behaviour, lifestyle characteristics and the psychographics of a particular tightly defi ned market
niche. Niche marketing is 'a method to meet customer needs through tailoring goods and
services for small markets' (Stanton
et al
., 1991). In niche marketing, 'the focus is on the customer
and on profi t; niche marketers specialize in serving marketing niches. Instead of pursuing the
whole market (mass marketing), or large segments of the market, these fi rms target segments
within segments or, for the sake of simplicity, niche' (Dalgic and Leeuw 1994: 44).
Businesses that identify different market niches and meet their needs need a well-developed
understanding of its participants, before any decision on promotional planning, marketing
