Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
experience required to successfully attract and satisfy niche tourists. This is especially true if a
community seeks familiarity with particular subcultures for marketing and promotion purposes.
This may be exacerbated in relation to tourism products and services built around specialist
knowledge and training (adventure tourism, safari tourism, photographic tourism). Niche
tourism may also not offer a solution to those destinations seeking a form or type that is more
sustainable or integrated to the real economy than mass tourism.
Further research
Niche tourism has become a focus for conferences, modules in formal academia and institutions
and investigations by academics, practitioners, policy makers, consultants and researchers.
However, the focus is usually on a small number of established niches, rather than those in
decline, while many others remain unexplored. There is a need to expand beyond the focus of
niches as a 'consumption process' (Novelli 2005) with more research required on why certain
niches emerge and the specifi c needs, interests and motivations that sustain them, as well as the
different motivations and practices of those within a niche. Such research may create a greater
understanding of niche tourist behaviour so as to better aid small businesses to identify a
profi table niche and position/target their products. There is also a lack of understanding as to the
challenges and complexities businesses face if seeking to attract specifi c niche tourism markets
to specifi c areas, and whether success can lead to neighbourhood, community, regional and
national development. There is also a gap in knowledge as to how supportive linked networks
may be developed between niche businesses and the role of regional and national governments
in developing, promoting and facilitating niche tourism. Further research is also required in
understanding the complexities of the relationships niche tourists form with people, places and
pasts as they come to consume and experience them, the impact niche tourism development
may have on future destination development and whether forms of niche tourism could be more
sustainably developed and managed by businesses and communities.
Conclusions
The stark dichotomy between mass and niche is too simple to capture the development of niche
tourism and tourists. Social, economic, political and cultural factors combined with innovations
in information, communications and transport technologies, have given impetus to individuals
seeking new bonds, social differentiation, distinction and status. These are deep forces, and
for many, the economic crises (2007-current) will hasten individuals to rethink aspects of their
lives - from where they live, how they work, to how they invest their lives. Rather than consume
discourses provided by a tourist-industrial complex, the fullest stretches of the imagination are
now sought (and increasingly catered for and met) in the margins. Individuals can now imagine
themselves in a countless variety of settings and practices no matter how remote or inaccessible,
the imagination envisaging global possibilities often far from their immediate environments. This
chapter, in seeking to make sense of this refl exive identity search and longing for unscripted
spaces, peoples and cultures, argues that profound societal changes have enabled the development
of what is commonly labelled niche tourism. A constant mutual exchange between suppliers and
markets has enabled thousands of small to medium enterprises, and, more recently, large fi rms
and destination marketing organizations to serve, co-produce and collaborate so as to develop
niche products. These diverse consumption related activities have become woven into the social,
political and economic lives of communities, villages, towns and cities across the globe. The
development and access to new tourism experiences has helped integrate localities and consumers
