Adventure Tourism as a ‘New Frontier’ in Leisure

This paper is concerned with developing discussion around the model of serious and casual leisure, first proposed by Stebbins (1992), in relation to the emergence of adventure tourism. In particular the discussion uses the concept of ‘frontier’ to interrogate the model and its utility in understanding the apparent attractiveness of adventure sports and activities to tourism today. It is suggested that conceptually frontier is useful because of its evocation of culturally embedded ideas such as exploration, expedition and engagement with otherness which generates the potential for excitement and suggests a serious engagement in active leisure. However, by drawing upon Mortlock (1984) and others it is suggested that adventure is both subjective and variable in time and place. One important dynamic is the potential of the ‘centre’ to undermine the extraordinariness of an adventure situation through the imposition of risk management strategies and tourism infrastructure. The outcome of such developments is an inclination towards casual leisure. Thus, although adventure tourism does engage with frontier activities it also offers leisure career opportunities consistent with other aspects of tourism. It is concluded that serious and casual leisure trajectories are a mixture as active tourists move towards and then back from frontiers in an ongoing social and spatial dynamic.