The Backpacker Tourist

Backpacker tourism has shifted from the margins of the travel industry into the mainstream. Backpacker Tourism: Concepts and profiles explores the current state of the international backpacker phenomenon, drawing together different disciplinary perspectives on its meaning, impact and significance. Links are drawn between conceptual issues and case studies, setting backpacking in its wider social, cultural and economic context.

The Backpacker Tourist: A contemporary perspective explores the increasing number of people traveling around the world as backpackers and analyses the great diversification of this demographic and their varied experiences while traveling.

There has been a phenomenal growth of backpacker tourism from the overland routes to India in the 1960s, to present-day backpacker tourism across the less developed world. As a result there has been significant economic development impacts of backpacker tourism upon local communities especially in areas with the largest concentrations of backpackers (South and South-East Asia particularly Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and India), as well as increasingly in Latin America. This volume provides a focused review of the economic development impacts of backpacker tourism in developing regions furthering knowledge on how backpacker tourism can play a crucial role in development strategies in these areas. First, it reviews the origins of the backpackers with a detailed examination of their "hippy" predecessors on the overland trail, before discussing the emergence of modern backpackers including social and cultural aspects, and how new technologies are changing their experience. It then analyses the powerful economic development impacts of backpackers on local host communities in cities and rural areas with a special focus on coastal destinations. Extensive case study material is used from backpacker destinations across Asia, Latin America and Africa. In doing so the book provides original insights into how backpacker tourism is highly significant for poverty alleviation and effective local development since it has strong linkages to the local economy, and less economic leakage than conventional tourism. Written by a leading academic in this area, this volume will be of interest to students of Tourism and Development Studies.

The search for new tourism experiences as well as changes in the tourism industry itself has led to new forms of individualised travel and consequentially new forms of backpacker tourism. This volume provides an up to date examination of the behaviour, attitudes and motivations of backpacker tourists as well as the growth of the infrastructure behind backpacker tourism phenomenon throughout the world. Drawing upon insights from geography, sociology, anthropology, management and marketing, Backpacker Tourism provides theoretically informed case studies of individual destinations of backpackers. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of backpacker tourism as well as those involved in the backpacker tourism industry itself.

Building on previous work on backpacking, this book takes the analysis of backpacker tourism further by engaging both with new theoretical debates into tourism experiences and mobilities as well as with new empirical phenomena such as the rise of the 'flashpacker' and alternative destinations.

The Backpacker Tourist: A contemporary perspective explores the increasing number of people traveling around the world as backpackers and analyses the great diversification of this demographic and their varied experiences while traveling.

Routledge Handbook of the Tourist Experience offers a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary research on the tourist experience. It draws together multidisciplinary perspectives from leading tourism scholars to explore emergent tourist behaviours and motivations. This handbook provides up-to-date, critical discussions of established and emergent themes and issues related to the tourist experience from a primarily socio-cultural perspective. It opens with a detailed introduction which lays down the framework used to examine the dynamic parameters of the tourist experience. Organised into five thematic sections, chapters seek to build and enhance knowledge and understanding of the significance and meaning of diverse elements of the tourist experience. Section 1 conceptualises and understands the tourist experience through an exploration of conventional themes such as tourism as authentic and spiritual experience, as well as emerging themes such as tourism as an embodied experience. Section 2 investigates the new, developing tourist demands and motivations, and a growing interest in the travel career. Section 3 considers the significance, motives, practices and experiences of different types of tourists and their roles such as the tourist as photographer. Section 4 discusses the relevance of ‘place’ to the tourist experience by exploring the relationship between tourism and place. The last section, Section 5, scrutinises the role of the tourist in creating their experiences through themes such as ‘transformations in the tourist role’ from passive receiver of experiences to co-creator of experiences, and ‘external mediators in creating tourist experiences'. This handbook is the first to fill a notable gap in the tourism literature and collate within a single volume critical insights into the diverse elements of the tourist experience today. It will be of key interest to academics and students across the fields of tourism, hospitality management, geography, marketing and consumer behaviour.

Backpackers have shifted from the margins of the travel industry into the global spotlight. This volume explores the international backpacker phenomenon, drawing together different disciplinary perspectives on its meaning, impact and significance. Links are drawn between theory and practice, setting backpacking in its wider social, cultural and economic context.