4 An A–Z of new tourism terminology The following list is not exclusive but is indicative of the types of terms used as descrip-

Box 4.4 An A–Z of new tourism terminology The following list is not exclusive but is indicative of the types of terms used as descrip-

tors of the new forms of tourism. Academic

Scientific Adventure

Sustainable Alternative

Ecological

Trekking Anthro-

Environmentally friendly

Truck Appropriate

Wildlife Contact

Additionally, terms used to describe markets include: Niche

Designer Individuated

Flexible

Bespoke Specialised

Personalised

Customised

With this burgeoning list of new terms has emerged a new range of travel agents and tour operators which offer their clients individually centred, flexible, personalised holi- days. Phrases used to appeal to the tourist’s desire for something different and exclu- sive include: ‘designer’ tourism from Cara Spencer Safaris; ‘bespoke’ itineraries from Journey Latin America. The markets associated with this are referred to as ‘individu- ated’ or ‘specialised’, as distinct from ‘mass’.

It is also necessary for operators to differentiate themselves from ‘conventional’ travel operators. Magic of the Orient, therefore, claim their holiday brochure is ‘like no other’, for it is a ‘collection of ideas’, and Roama Travel (specialising in treks and climbs in India and Nepal) establish that they are not ‘a travel agent but a specialist tour oper- ator’. Travel consultancies, a middle-class transformation of the travel agent, have also begun to appear. Marco Polo Travel Advisory Service, for example, offers a consulta- tion service to the ‘imaginative and independent traveller looking for an extra dimen- sion’ to their holiday. The small specialist operators catering for the new middle classes who form an increasingly significant market segment can translate their desire to be a twenty-first-century adventurer, explorer or ‘traveller’. Urry (1990b) argues that this represents a consumer reaction against being part of a mass; and, as we have discussed, the emergence of these specialised markets is a feature of a post-Fordist mode of consumption. In the same way that the new middle classes assume control of the ‘new’ activities through their exclusiveness, so the operators assume exclusivity, and therefore status, for themselves on the grounds of their specialised, individualised offerings.

The messy word de-differentiation (a key feature of postmodernism) is used to convey

a straightforward idea. It involves the way new tourism practices may no longer be about tourism per se, but embody other activities. On the one hand this means combining a variety of ‘activities’ such as adventure, trekking, climbing, sketching and mountain biking. More significantly, on the other hand, it means the marriage of different, often intellectual, spheres of activity with tourism (that is, academic, anthropological, archaeo-

11111 logical, ecological and scientific tourisms).

94 • Tourism and sustainability

These latter forms of tourism are becoming increasingly important to the small-scale tour operator and travel agent. School, college or group tours combining elements of fieldwork and vacation offer a way of catching larger numbers of clients on a package which has to be especially designed, but for the group rather than an individual. Some examples of this type of development are given in Chapter 7.

In this book we use the phrase ‘new forms of tourism’ generically to cover the range of terms given in Box 4.4. Other terms, such as ‘sustainable’, ‘alternative’, ‘ecotourism’ and the like are used either because they appear in quotations or because they refer to

a specific type of tourism that is appropriately described only by that word.

Defining the ‘new’ tourism

Because the study of the forms of new tourism is still in its infancy, there is no clear agreement on their definitions and conceptual and practical boundaries. This lack of consensus is at its most conspicuous between those who study new forms of tourism and those who operate tours. But disagreements are also evident amongst others in the field, the conservationists, government officials and service providers. The new tourisms are truly contested ideas and the tourism literature is peppered with claim and counter- claim, with mainly academics and interest groups advocating and defending particular terms and definitions. A little like tourism destinations themselves, the terminology of new tourism experiences a relatively rapid circulation as terms come in and fall out of fashion (although there is often little to distinguish one term from another).

As with any activity which involves many groups, the terms mean different things to different people, according to the role they have within the activity. Protagonists per- ceive and portray the activity they are involved in as ‘sustainable’, ‘no-impact’, ‘respon- sible’, ‘low-impact’, ‘green’, ‘environmentally friendly’ or use some other suitable term to convey the message. We do not intend to get sidetracked into a lengthy discussion of the many and varied definitions of new tourism types. Suffice it to say they share, in varying degrees, a concern for ‘development’ and take account of the environmental, economic and socio-cultural impacts of tourism. They also share an expressed concern, again with varying levels of commitment, for participation and control to be assumed by ‘local people’ and the degree to which they engage and benefit the poor. Box 4.5 sum- marises some of the major features of the front-runners in the struggle for supremacy of terms. Most of these terms and their meanings underlie or echo the notion of sustain- ability in its varying guises and again suggest an important link between sustainability, development and new tourism.

The extent to which these terms can be used interchangeably is itself a debatable point. But more significant is the extent to which the claim of sustainability can be justi- fied, a point examined under the heading ‘The principles of sustainability in tourism’ (p. 97) and in later chapters.

One further point of relevance to the sustainability of tourism is the acknowledge- ment in some quarters that mass packaged tours may be just as sustainable as some of the new forms of tourism – see, for instance, Table 7.1, which makes a qualitative comparison of the sustainability of a package sun-sea-and-sand holiday and a trekking tour. Acknowledgement is made by organisations such as Tourism Concern, Green Globe and by some in the industry that sustainability is not the exclusive concern of new forms of tourism. But the attempt to subsume sustainability is reflected in the language and terminology of the new forms of tourism.

This section sketches in turn the meaning of sustainability in the field of tourism to tourists, tour operators, host communities, national governments, regional and

Tourism and sustainability • 95