“Adventure tourism often occurs in difficult to reach places and often affects vulnerable people. Ideally, prior to any tourism development, the network of potentially affected stakeholders or communities should give input. This is referred to
According to Le De (2011, p.121), relocating communities after a disaster can have more negative effects for the population than benefits and may actually increase their vulnerability: “Recent examples such as the Indian Ocean tsunami affecting
Volunteer tourism as such is not new, neither is the combination of adventure tourism and volunteer purposes. New is, however, the extent to which adventure tour operators and adventure tourists alike engage in the recovery efforts and
In the 2014 UNWTO Global Report on Adventure Tourism, ATTA president Shannon Stowell identifies the top four trends in adventure tourism: The softening of adventure travel, customization of trip experiences, multi-generational groups, and
Scheyvens (2002, p.59) proposes an empowerment framework to analyze “the actual or potential impacts of tourism on local communities”. The four dimensions of empowerment are economic, social, psychological, and political empowerment (see Table).
Wang and Cater (2015, p.209) examined “the potential for tourism development to contribute to recovery strategies following major earthquakes, particularly in rural areas that may be overlooked in the effort to rebuild urban centres”. The Taomi
Tourism comes with many hidden costs that can have negative economic effects on the host communities. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) finds that “often rich countries are better able to profit from tourism than poor ones. Whereas
In their Global Report on Adventure Tourism (2014) the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) indicates that there are not only differences between hard and soft adventure activities, but also different types of adventure tourists who
According to Swarbrooke (2003, p.14-16), adventure is “where participants are voluntarily putting themselves in a position where they believe they are taking a step into the unknown, where they will face challenges, and where they will discover
Ritchie (2009, p.44-45) states that “in both crisis and disaster definitions there is a belief that disasters and crises are temporary and that they have certain lifecycles which could last hours, days, months or even years. (…) Prescriptive