Tourism is a broad term covering a wide array of activities making it the largest industry in the world. There is no distinct way of determining whether a particular activity is deemed as part of tourism. Majority of authors define tourism within the context of leisure and recreation. “tourism may be through of as the relationships and phenomena arising out of journeys and temporary stays of people travelling primarily for leisure or recreation purposes”. Moreover, tourism is “the theories and practice of travelling and visiting places for leisure related purposes”. Thus, the concepts of leisure, recreation and tourism are realized in a variety of activities that offers the opportunity for people to experience enjoyment, satisfaction as well as self-expression making the overall experience motivational. Tourism is also designated from other activities due to its independence from activities involving employment or family care. People engage in tourism voluntarily and as a matter of choice because it is a want. However, the World Tourism Organization broadened the concept of tourism as “the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes”.
Tourism is a growing business and like other industries involves innovations for product differentiation and diversity. The quest for cutting-edge activities offering a high probability for customer patronage resulted to the development of venues and activities extremely different from the usual beach experience. Contemporary tourism targeted not only the leisure and recreational demands of people but ventured into people’s adventurous nature. These different activities created a type of tourism called adventure tourism.
Adventure tourism is a kind of niche tourism that involves travel or exploration of remote and inaccessible areas as the recreational activity in itself or as a way of reaching the site for recreational activities that includes physical effort, determination as well as certain degrees of risk. Adventure implies thrill, adrenaline rush, challenge, conquest, dare, fear and risk. People exhibit adventurism even in childhood through literary works such as Sinbad and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Indiana Jones movie series. Adventurous literature and movies are deemed as escape mechanisms because of the mixture of romantic, illusionary, idealistic and visionary themes. Adventure tourism adopts escapism in providing opportunities for people to escape into their desired adventures.
Man’s adventurous character constitutes great potential for adventure tourism businesses to earn profit. The increasing number of adventure tourism venues and activities worldwide exhibits the recognition of this potential.
Nature and Scope of Adventure Tourism Products
Adventure tourism products are centred towards the changing demands of the market. Tourism authors propose different ways that consumer demand has change in the tourism industry. Earlier description of consumer demand mentions the critical consumer tourists asking for environmentally sound holidays, other descriptions mention the demand for real travel and special interest traveller. However, there is a new breed of tourists seeking a different experience such as travelling independently and enjoy without destroying nature constituted by the adventurous and educated people. The shift to independent travel caused a corresponding shift to tailor-crafted tourism products. Tailor-crafted tourism products were suitable for small businesses that provide different specialized activities.
Since the market has been widely segmented due to the consideration of individual specialized demand, innovativeness and creativity of the small businesses to identify and take over new market niches. Adventure tourism products results from the conscious effort of entrepreneurs to provide activities suited to the demands of a particular group. Although the target market is small, businesses expect to draw the interest of other segments of the market by innovating to differentiate their products.
Adventure Tourism in New Zealand
Trends in New Zealand Tourism Industry
The last two decades of tourism in New Zealand witnessed important changes. The number of international tourist arrivals significantly increased from a mere 445,195 in 1980 to 1.5 million as of 1999 reflecting a steady growth of 10 percent. The increase in the number of international tourists differs across the different nationality markets since international tourism is affected by the economic condition of the different regions and states. In 1990, the segmentation of international tourist arrivals showed that tourists from Australia comprise 35 percent; North America, UK and the rest of Europe comprise 35 percent; Japan accounting for 11 percent and the rest of Asia with 8 percent. This is because citizens of industrial countries have the resources to travel and Japan is an Asian country that showed rapid economic growth compared to other Asian countries. After 5 years, the tourist arrivals in New Zealand reflect an increasing demand from Asian countries with 21 percent and a decrease in tourists from Australia and the other industrial countries. However, the Asian economic crisis hit the tourism industry around the world including New Zealand. It is only with the improving economic conditions of the regions that New Zealand is experiencing recovery in its tourism industry.
Apart from the economic considerations affecting adventure tourism in New Zealand, the changing preferences of the world market also determines the persistence of the industry. The New Zealand Tourism Board (1997) based its tourism strategy on a comprehensive market research that identified the fast pace of integration in different nationality groups. The research showed that the primary motivation for Australians to travel is to experience a change in their lifestyle. This means that adventure tourism activities that deviate from their lifestyle, which is either stressful or boring, are sought after by Australians. In the case of Europe, Germans are motivated to engage in tourism activities that fit their environmental evangelist character while people from Netherlands seek genuine socio-cultural interaction.
The tourism industry in New Zealand is structured to respond to the demands of different segments of the international tourism market. New Zealand tourism industry is made up of small local business firms with little multinational corporate interest. Around two-thirds of the tourism businesses require less than ten employees. While multinational companies control hotel and transport businesses, small businesses thrive in tourist attractions, tour operations and activities.
Bungee Jumping
New Zealand is one of the first countries to host adventure tourism by offering the bungee jumping experience in the town of Queensland. Adventure tourism has become the lifeblood of Queensland. The number of tourists exceeds the number of locals with a ratio of 100 to 1. Queenstown became an instant tourist destination after hosting the initial commercial bungee jump on November 12, 1988. After that date, around 450,000 adventurers have experienced the plunge. Although bungee jumping looks dangerous it involves better safety measures and equipment than other adventure tourism products. According to Henry Van Ash, the co-founder of commercial bungee jumping, the dollars paid by adventurers is for the fear factor of the activity.
Innovation and creativity is the key to the success of bungee jumping as an adventure tourism industry in New Zealand. This is because bungee jumping is a fertility rite practiced by people in the South Pacific that was developed by Oxford Dangerous Sports Club and eventually commercialized by New Zealand. Originally, the fertility rite involved jumping off a bridge by males of the island of Vanuatu to offer their injuries to the gods for good harvest. Commercially, it involved being tied by the feet to a rope that is slightly shorter than the length of the drop. At present, there is now a parasail version that involves a 180-meter drop but the adventure drops down seated in a two-man seat suspended to a giant parasail.
Risks to Participants in Adventure Tourism
People look for the thrill and the adrenaline rush through the feeling of fear, danger and taking risks in adventure tourism. Although, businesses hosting adventure tourism products comply with safety requirements based on their experience and the standard guidelines for the activity, accidents are inevitable because the business firms are dealing with burden involved in making tourists experience a risky activity for the first time. Tourists have a high propensity to be injured because they are in an unfamiliar surrounding doing unfamiliar activities.
Travel-related mortality across the globe has been attributed to injuries sustained by people in their tourist destination. Injuries account for deaths 25 times more than infectious disease. Injuries burden the host country, the tourism industry and tourists requiring the need for the concerned parties to develop safety standards for a particular activity to prevent injuries. According to researches, motor vehicle crashes is the leading cause of hospitalization by tourists due to the unfamiliar terrain such as driving on the wrong side of the road. The second cause of hospitalization of tourists is decompression illness in scuba diving. In terms of tourism adventure activities, scuba diving involves the most cases of injuries to tourists. Other water related activities also involve the greatest number of accidents.
In the case of New Zealand, reports show that around 19 percent of the injuries sustained by tourists involved varying recreational or adventure activities accounting for 8.4 percent injuries for every 100,000 international visitors. The report pointed out that the primary adventure activities accounting for most injuries are skiing, tramping and mountaineering. In terms of the commercial adventure activities, cycling and horseback riding causes most tourist injuries. Out of the reported 516,722 tourists involved in adventure activities in 1998, 7,401 people were injured from cycling, 6,636 were injured from caving, 3,164 from fishing, 3,096 from quad biking and 718 from horseback riding. However, the researchers pointed out that in the research only half of the operators contributed to the report. Apart from this, operators only investigate serious injuries. There is also no consistent reporting from hospitals. There is a need for regulation in terms of safety standards and industry reporting crucial to the determination of risk problems in adventure tourism to find appropriate solutions that would benefit the industry as well as tourists.
In relation to bungee jumping, the activity is generally viewed as dangerous and risky because involves a free fall. However, the activity is relatively safe when compare to other adventure activities. It ranked as 10th with 117 injuries in the adventure activities resulting to injuries. In the history of bungee jumping, it has caused deaths and serious injuries but these are related to human error rather than the nature of the activity. Bungee jumping risks related to human error include improper attachment of cords, a mismatch between the jumper and the cord, disparity in the length of cord and the distance of fall, and other misunderstanding and miscalculation in the physics of the activity.
Economic, Social and Environmental Impact of Adventure Tourism
Adventure tourism is a major contributor to the economic growth of New Zealand and the development of its tourism industry. Apart from this general benefit, small business and household entrepreneurs also benefit from the vibrancy of adventure tourism. According to the report of New Zealand Statistics (1999), tourism including adventure tourism contributed .9 billion or 3.4 percent to the country’s GDP. This is a significant amount when compared to agriculture with 5.6 percent, construction with 3.5 percent and communications with 3.0 percent. The tourism industry also contributes to economic growth when it stimulates business in other industries when hotels, transport firms and firms hosting tourist activities purchase supplies contribute another billion to the GDP. Apart from contributing to the income of the country, adventure tourism also provides employment and livelihood to locals. There were 58,000 persons were involved in the production of goods and services purchased and consumed by tourists. There were also 600,000 persons engage in business activities that support tourism. In the case on bungee jumping, the activity is operated by locals translating to livelihood, employment and household income.
The development of adventure tourism has a social impact on international tourists as well as the people of the countries hosting adventure activities. Tourism provides an avenue for cultural interaction among different cultures facilitating cultural tolerance through understanding. Tourism also results to learning on the differences in cultural beliefs and practices. It also builds friendly relations between states and their citizens. Locals are educated about other cultures in the same way that foreign tourists learn about the culture of host countries. However, these are the ideal expectations. In the experience of some host countries, tourism results to conflict, artificial construction, assimilation, and over development. Tourism has the capacity to influence cultural change. In the case of New Zealand, there is no reported significant social impact of adventure tourism. Social change revolves around the necessary change in economic activities to develop innovative adventure activities and the cultural interaction.
Tourism also has an impact on the environment of the host country especially in tourism activities requiring the building of artificial structures in forests and other natural environments. The primary negative impact is the destruction of natural resources and increase in pollutants. This is particularly true in countries with lenient regulations for activities known to have a negative impact on the environment. In the case of bungee jumping, local operators do not have to build an elaborate physical structure where they operate. Operators just have to build platforms in bridges or other places where they hold the activity. The only environmental effect is the building of trails going to the place that opens forests to the public especially if the activity develops into a mass adventure tourism activity.
Key Issues in Impact and Risk Management
Risk Management
Risk management is an important aspect of adventure tourism. Business firms engaged in adventure tourism cannot eliminate risk in their operations because risk is related intimately to adventure activities. Firms must recognize these before they can develop risk management strategies. There are three issues involved in risk management, which are 1) the role of the operators in risk management and 2) the role of regulatory bodies in providing standards of risk management.
Operators carry the great burden of implementing risk management to ensure the continuity of their business. As much as operators carry the risk of their clients sustaining injuries, they also incur the business risk of loosing customers in case of injury or death resulting from a person’s engagement in their adventure activities. Apart from the persistence of the business, operators also carry the burden of minimizing risk because they are deemed experts in the adventure activity and they know the risks, therefore they can prevent the actualization of these risks.
Government and industry regulatory bodies also carry the burden of ensuring the establishment of risk management strategies. The licensing bodies should implement standards and requirements for operators seeking permission to operate and conduct tests and inspections to ensure that basic safety precautions are met. In bungee jumping, expertise in the proper physical stance and equipment maintenance is a necessity.
Impact Management
Sustainable development is the salient issue in terms of impact management. Sustainable development is the integrated utilization of resources in consideration of the economic, social and cultural interest of future generations. Sustainable development is primarily the responsibility of the government and secondarily by operators of adventure activities. This impact management strategy involves the imposition of standards for the utilization of resources that are binding on adventure tourism operators.
In the case of economic development, measuring the economic contribution of adventure tourism should consider not only the revenue derived from these activities but also the financial and non-financial costs incurred by the community. In relation to social development, there should be a healthy cultural exchange so that the cultural integrity of the community is protected. This means that hosting adventure tourism and revenue generation should not compromise the culture of the community by espousing false information about the culture or by forcing the community to adopt a foreign culture to draw the attention of tourists. In terms of environmental development, there should be regulated utilization of natural resources to maintain ecological balance.
Conclusion
Adventure tourism is expected to persist because it offers an opportunity for people to realize their adventurous nature. However, it is also expected to evolve together with the change in the demand of the international tourism market. Adventure tourism offers great potential for revenue to host countries as well as employment and income to locals. In the development of the industry, the key factors that should be considered are innovativeness and creativity. The success of the introduction of adventure activities in New Zealand, particularly bungee jumping is attributed to the adoption of a fertility rite of the people in the South Pacific and its commercialization to comprise an adventure activity. Operators should always be on the watch for innovations and keep up with changing demand. The persistence of adventure tourism also necessitates the consideration of impact and risk management to ensure the continuity of the industry in the long run. Impact assessment measures should incorporate sustainable development to balance economic, social-cultural and environmental interests. Risk management strategies involve the sufficient regulation of adventure activities and development of expertise by operators to minimize risk.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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