Adventure travel

Adventure travel is a type of niche tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk (real or perceived), and which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has grown in recent decades as tourists seek out-of-the-ordinary or “roads less traveled” vacations, but lack of a clear operational definition has hampered measurement of market size and growth. According to the U.S.-based Adventure Travel Trade Association, adventure travel may be any tourist activity that includes physical activity, a cultural exchange, and connection with nature.

Adventure tourists may have the motivation to achieve mental states characterized as rush or flow, resulting from stepping outside their comfort zone. This may be from experiencing culture shock or by performing acts requiring significant effort and involve some degree of risk (real or perceived) and/or physical danger (See extreme sports). This may include activities such as mountaineering, trekking, bungee jumping, mountain biking, cycling, canoeing, scuba diving, rafting, kayaking, zip-lining, paragliding, hiking, exploring, sandboarding, caving and rock climbing. Some obscure forms of adventure travel include disaster and ghetto tourism. Other rising forms of adventure travel include social and jungle tourism.

Access to inexpensive consumer technology, with respect to Global Positioning Systems, flashpacking, social networking and photography, have increased the worldwide interest in adventure travel. The interest in independent adventure travel has also increased as more specialist travel websites emerge offering previously niche locations and sports.

Definitions
According to the US Adventure Travel Trade Association , adventure travel embraces every form of tourism that has three characteristics: physical challenge, cultural exchange, and closeness to nature.

Thomas Trümper defines adventure travel as a journey in which “activities predominate with the characteristics of adventure that are characteristic of adventurous situations and are experienced for their own sake, that is, an adventure motive must exist.”

According to Natascha Sverak, an adventure trip is “a barely planned journey into the unknown, leaving plenty of room for spontaneity and independence, challenging the body with a certain risk and allowing for sport and fun. In addition, it is strongly associated with nature / wildlife and the locals, while allowing variety and exceptional for the practitioner. ”

According to Manfred Köhler, Abenteuerreise means “spending holidays away from overflowing tourist areas, walking in the footsteps of former explorers and wanting to experience a touch of adventure. On the way, borderline experiences are made on his own performance, you get to know life in all its diversity, collects insights that also touch people who have no interest in “adventurous” force files. ”

According to Heinz Hahn and Hans-Jürgen Kagelmann adventure vacationers (A-type) are characterized by “the search for a unique experience, which is experienced not alone and uncontrolled danger, but with controlled risk and usually in a group of like-minded people “. “To be an adventurer means, first of all, to free oneself from the fear of what family, friends or neighbors could say, when you break away from your daily routine and start to realize your dreams.”

An adventure trip is defined by its spatial (away from home), temporal (longer term), social (isolation) and cultural dimension ( culture shock ).

Motivation
The exhausting long-distance travels of the merchant Marco Polo were motivated not only by the trade but also by “the temptations of the foreign, the foreign and the danger”. The Berlin travel researchers Hasso Spode cites as motive for extreme vacation experiences “late adolescent search for identity” in younger and “boredom” in older people with higher incomes. The Hamburg-based social scientist Ulrich Reinhardt sees a cause in the social change : “We identify only limited about our work or everyday life, but about the things we do in our spare time.” The hallmark of an adventurous traveler is absoluteUniqueness . According to Ralf Buckley, adventure tourists are motivated to experience a mental state of “rush” or ” flow ” resulting from leaving their comfort zone.

Types of adventure travel

Accessible tourism
There is a trend for developing tourism specifically for the disabled. Adventure travel for the disabled has become a $13 billion USD a year industry in North America. Some adventure travel destinations offer diverse programs and job opportunities developed specifically for the disabled.

Culinary tourism
Culinary tourism is defined as the pursuit of unique and memorable eating and drinking experiences.

Cultural tourism
Cultural tourism is the act of travelling to a place to see that location’s culture, including the lifestyle of the people in that area, the history of those people, their art, architecture, religions, and other factors that shaped their way of life.

Disaster tourism
Disaster tourism is the act of traveling to a disaster area as a matter of curiosity. The behavior can be a nuisance if it hinders rescue, relief, and recovery operations. If not done because of pure curiosity, it can be cataloged as disaster learning.

Ecotourism
Ecotourism is now defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education”.[full citation needed] The objective of ecotourism is to protect the environment from detrimental impacts such as human traffic, and to provide educational information by promoting the unique qualities of the environment. Additionally, ecotourism, “should attempt to move Eco tourists from a passive role, where their recreation is simply based on the natural environment, to a more active role where their activities actually contribute to the health and viability of those environments.”

Ethno tourism
Ethno tourism refers to visiting a foreign location for the sake of observing the indigenous members of its society for the sake of non-scientific gain. Some extreme forms of this include attempting to make first contact with tribes that are protected from outside visitors.Two controversial issues associated with ethno tourism include bringing natives into contact with diseases they do not have immunities for, and the possible degradation or destruction of a unique culture and/or language.

Extreme tourism
Extreme tourism involves travel to dangerous (extreme) locations or participation in dangerous events or activities. This form of tourism can overlap with extreme sport.

Jungle tourism
Jungle tourism is a rising subcategory of adventure travel defined by active multifaceted physical means of travel in the jungle regions of the earth. Although similar in many respects to adventure travel, jungle tourism pertains specifically to the context of region, culture and activity. According to the Glossary of Tourism Terms, jungle tours have become a major component of green tourism in tropical destinations and are a relatively recent phenomenon of Western international tourism.

Overland travel
Overland travel or overlanding refers to an “overland journey” – perhaps originating with Marco Polo’s first overland expedition in the 13th century from Venice to the Mongolian court of Kublai Khan. Today overlanding is a form of extended adventure holiday, embarking on a long journey, often in a group. Overland companies provide a converted truck or a bus plus a tour leader, and the group travels together overland for a period of weeks or months.

Since the 1960s overlanding has been a popular means of travel between destinations across Africa, Europe, Asia (particularly India), the Americas and Australia. The “Hippie trail” of the 60s and 70s saw thousands of young westerners travelling through the Middle East to India and Nepal. Many of the older traditional routes are still active, along with newer routes like Iceland to South Africa overland and Central Asian post soviet states.

Urban exploration
Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities. Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as “draining” (when exploring drains) “urban spelunking”, “urban caving”, or “building hacking”.

The nature of this activity presents various risks, including physical danger and the possibility of arrest, heavy fines, and incarceration. Many, but not all, of the activities associated with urban exploration could be considered trespassing or other violations of local or regional laws.

Spiritual tourism
The Spiritual tourism refers to activities done for spiritual pursuits like pilgrimage, taking part in Yoga and meditation etc. Spiritual quest has become one of the major goal among many travelers. The programs like yoga treks, pilgrimages, meditation tours are getting more popular day by day.

The Educational Effect
The short phrase “traveling forms” to be read in travel catalogs is wrong in this simplification, because the pure on-the-go-experience does not yet trigger an education-effective automatism. ” Travel can form if it is consciously lived and reflected, ” is how the venture researcher Siegbert A. Warwitz differentiates this statement. This is especially true for the real adventure because it is associated with a high degree of personal responsibility and holistic experience intensity “The personality-building effect depends on the degree of concern that the encounter [with the adventure] can trigger. To this end, it is of considerable importance to what extent the adventure-hungry, with all the consequences real, active and complex is willing to contribute to the venture-like happenings . ”

The notion of adventure ( ventiure ) and the idea of a corresponding adventure trip was shaped by the poets of the High Middle Ages , putting in their epicsdepicting the departure of knights who broke away from all personal ties and familiar surroundings and went out into the world to honorably live adventures. These so-called “heroic journeys” were not superficially stimulating satisfaction, but the growth of the personality of the young knight, who had to deal with the claims of the world in lonely self-discovery about many wrong decisions, wrong actions and the failure of honest endeavors. It was about finding and proving ethical attitudes and character. As typical examples of the CVs of the most excellent knights of the can Arthurian and especially the gradual ripening of the young Parzival toworthy knights are, what Wolfram von Eschenbach has impressively portrayed in his eponymous epic.

The educational aspect also plays an essential role in the so-called ” Walz ” of the journeyman tradesmen , who since the late Middle Ages have been instructed by their guilds for years of apprenticeship with foreign master craftsmen. They had to master before they startedmigrate across Europe to collect different work practices and life experiences. Many adventures awaited her with the dangers of highwaymen, barren shelters, unpredictable, rough instructors, as well as seductive liaisons, before being accepted as mature master craftsmen. In an old Burschenlied it says accordingly: “This must be a bad miller, who never went hiking” (from: “Hiking is the miller’s desire”).

The “rides” of the students and students of the so-called Wandervogel and the youth movement that emerged from it at the beginning of the 20th century are also to be understood as educational adventure trips . The young generation began to emancipate themselves from the way of life of the older through the outwardly accomplished outburst “from gray city walls” into the self-determined simple life in the wild and at the same time yield to their wanderlust, what they in their ” ride songs ” and the picture the romantic poet tried to transfigure the search for the ” Blue Flower “.

Market share
Adventure tourism has grown in recent decades as demand for extraordinary experiences has increased, but measuring market size is difficult because there is a lack of generally accepted operationalization . According to surveys of the Hamburg Foundation for Futures Research , about 10% of the population spend extreme holidays, twice as many men as women and twenty times as many young adults as senior citizens over 65.

Criticism of adventure tourism
The criticism of adventure tourism has a number of starting points. They range from the accusation of widespread misleading labels and self-deception through the use of adventurous vocabulary for adventure, sports, nature or cultural trips on the criticism of the environmental impact of the produced long-distance travel to the fault of damage to sensitive natural landscapes, valuable cultural monuments and untouched indigenous peoples through the expansion to mass tourism , which seeks with exotic tourism as far as possible exotic destinations:

The vehemently spreading adventurous tourism picks up the latent need for extraordinary experiences, which often no longer offer professional life and habitual environment. The modern package tourist is fascinated by the term “adventure”, which promises him this experience. At the same time he does not want to give up the comfortable safety and the usual comfort. He wants the “safe” adventure that does not exist. Thus, the tourist industry offers him what he wants, an Antarctic trip , for example, on a safe, eistauglichem cruise ship , fully air-conditioned, with “carefree insurance coverage”, comfortable salons, sauna, full board, event program, tour guide and provides them with the attractive label “Expedition “or” adventure trip “. It is declared as a ” wilderness trekking ” or ” safari “, which after short predator observations from the safe off-road vehicle should quickly end in the air-conditioned lodge , under the clean shower, the delicious three-course meal and in vermin-free white sheets. Indians or Papuans dress up, thrillingly painted, in their baskets before the tourist bus rolls on. And the medicine man positions himself before his skulls and totem polesurrounded by magic signs drapped hut to deliver exotic images for the cameras. The so-called “event hopping”, promised in the program, organized by the organizer, makes the tourist an “adventure consumer”. He is “tempted” without effort, initiative and personal risk, as the venture researcher Siegbert A. Warwitz puts it. According to Warwitz, the “pseudo-adventure” moves away from the original idea and the concept of adventure, as they have been characterized by the Middle High German poets and gained historical significance, because they are constituting moments of adventure, such as self-initiative, unpredictable risk, all-human Admitting oneself, exposing oneself to real danger, the self-reliant car, the willful omission of any adverse consequences have been lost. The package tourist goes with a “full insurance mentality” only half-heartedly in the supposed adventure and reaps only a “false adventure”.

The criticism “environmental damage caused by mass tourism” is mainly led by the environmental protection organizations such as BUND , Green League , NABU , Greenpeace . It is denounced that the ever-expanding adventure tourism is aimed at particularly vulnerable natural areas to meet the thirst for adventure of tourists, and that long-distance travel in the most remote areas of the earth increase the traffic and thus the environmental impact and disrupt the ecological balance. The activists involved in the so-called eco-movement , for example, vehemently criticize the invasion of ever-larger cruise ships into the sensitive regions of the worldArctic and Antarctic .

The cultural effects of a sprawling adventure tourism in exotic old cultural countries are mainly taken up and criticized by the cultural anthropologists :

Exuberant adventure tourism is forcing visitors to adapt to the expectations of visitors in terms of comfort and exoticism. The “stranger” is adapted to the wishes of the guests and the specifications of the tour operator and thus ultimately a mere backdrop. Thus, local cultural traditions are often continued only as a show and staging for the tourists. Adventure tourism is becoming a monoculture , subordinated to whole areas for profit reasons. The tourists thereby contribute to the fact that the cultural peculiarities of these countries are pushed back. There is a superimposition and suppression of autochthonous culture in the form of a ” Westernization”And a shift in the population structure in tourist areas that massively affect not only the material, but also the intangible cultural heritage of the target areas. Changes in forms of expression and meaning also affect socio-cultural identities. Criticism of ethno-tourism in this sense is practiced accordingly by the columnist Ingrid Thurner in a journal article.

Protective measures
Countries such as Nepal or Bhutan are trying to counteract the alienation of their indigenous culture through the mass influx of adventure tourists through restrictions on visitor numbers, temporary residence restrictions and relatively high “entry fees” into their country. The big tour companies and cruise companies have also adopted the concept of a so-called “soft tourism”committed as an alternative to mass tourism. Gentle tourism makes it an ethical goal to preserve the characteristics of the country as well as possible and to influence the life of the resident population or the animal world as little as possible. For this purpose, the smallest possible groups are formed and the participants informed intensively and accompanied the targets accordingly.

Thus, adventure activities presuppose certain effort and risks to a certain extent controllable, and that can vary in intensity according to the requirement of each activity and the physical and psychological capacity of the practitioner. This requires that adventure tourism be treated in a particular way, especially with regard to safety aspects. Therefore, guidelines, strategies, standards, regulations, certification processes and other specific instruments and frameworks should be worked out.

The adventure tourism segment must contemplate, in its practice, behaviors and attitudes that can avoid and minimize possible negative impacts to the environment, emphasizing the respect and appreciation of the receiving communities. It is understood by environment – natural and constructed – the set of social, economic, cultural interrelations and with the nature of a determined territory.

Well-known adventure travelers
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was an Italian sailor in Castilian service, who reached in 1492 an island of the Bahamas and rediscovered the American continent.
Vasco da Gama (1468-1524), Portuguese navigator and explorer.
Thomas Cook (1808-1892) was a Baptist clergyman and British tourism pioneer and founder of the travel company of the same name. The system of package holidays goes back to him.
Rüdiger Nehberg (* 1935) is a German survival expert and human rights activist who uses his expeditions to draw attention to social problems.
Don Quixote de la Mancha is a fictional character of the Spanish poet Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), who in the alleged succession to the noble knights of the Middle Ages embarks on adventure journeys in order to perform exploits.

Source from Wikipedia