Special interest tourism is one of the fastest growing segments within the tourism industry. A more mature travelling public is increasingly seeking experiences which satisfy a whole spectrum of interests. Accordingly, there is a need for new tourism products, services and experiences that cater to these markets. Special interest tourism incorporates various sectors such as regional, urban, community, environmental, cruise, heritage, cultural, sex and educational tourism, all of which are discussed in this new text.Special interest tourism products operate within a broad industry framework affecting the social, political, environmental and economic context of the tourism region and tourist market. The authors discuss special interest tourism strategies, policies and initiatives introduced in Australia and internationally. The text combines theory and industry applications to illustrate the diversity of tourism product and development as it relates to special interest tourism.

Special interest tourism is growing rapidly due to a discerning and heterogeneous travel market and the demand for more focused activity or interest-based tourism experiences. This book approaches the topic from the perspective of both supply and demand, and addresses the complexities now inherent in this area of tourism. It presents a contextualised overview of contemporary academic research, concepts, principles and industry-based practice insights, and also considers the future of special interest tourism in light of the emergence of ethical consumerism. Sometimes referred to as niche or contemporary tourism, this book provides a complete introduction to the study of special interest tourism for students.

This research-based textbook covers 15 chapters on food, film, shopping, medical, ghost, and suicide tourism, based on research conducted over 15 years on tourists from East Asia and Southeast Asia, the UK, the USA, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand. It introduces students, researchers, educators, tourist bureaus, and tour operators to the demands of affluent tourists from the newly industrialized countries of East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Provides a broad analysis of the nature and growth, business opportunities and the management problems they present, the range and types of activities available as well as the current importance and future status of this rapidly evolving industry. Global in scope, it features in-depth case studies written by renowned experts along with extensive statistical and graphic material.

Tourism is the fourth biggest industry in the world. What are the key concepts in Tourist Studies? This essential resource for students of tourism contains concise and authoritative entries on: • Planning Tourism • Sustainable Tourism • Festivals and Events • Cultural Tourism • Economics of Tourism • Regeneration • The Experience Economy • Urban Tourism • Sex Tourism Shrewdly judged to suit the needs of the modern student, the book offers the basic materials, tools and guidance for making sense of tourism and gaining the best results in essays and exams.

As the tourism industry grows worldwide, researchers continue to seek solutions and practices that support increased tourism to specific regions. Special interest tourism is a method that looks at how psychological and sociological factors help a visitor choose which destination to visit. By applying this type of tourism in Southeast Asia, the role of emotions, experiences, and place attachment becomes a driving factor for tourists. Special Interest Tourism in Southeast Asia: Emerging Research and Opportunities critically discusses the challenges associated with special interest tourism and how it can be used to overcome unfavorable impacts of tourism for the local community, as well as preserve cultural heritage. The book covers emerging issues such as sustainability, technological advances within this type of tourism, and responses to over tourism and tourism-phobia. It is ideally designed for government officials, policymakers, managers, industry professionals, and university students seeking current research on the recent growth of the tourism industry.

This book adopts a collectivist perspective on special interest tourism consumption, bringing together research on ‘special interest tourism’ and ‘niche tourism’ as well as more recent research into the interdisciplinary applications of the sociological concept of neo‐tribes. It promotes a shift in perspective away from special interest tourism understood as a sum of similarly motivated individuals, to a collective view of special interest tourists who share common characteristics (e.g., shared values, beliefs and mutual interests) and group structures. This approach provides a better understanding of groupings that are not unified by a common tourism motivation, but brought together by otherwise conditioned commonalities in actual behavior triggered by supply-side contexts (e.g., Airbnb). The book considers tourism micro‐segments as consumer tribes (i.e., as symbolic communities) in which individuals are embedded and loosely bound together. As there is limited research on the collectivist perspective on special interest tourism consumption, in the first part the book’s conceptual/theoretical discourse contributes to a better understanding of ‘groupings’ in tourism behavior but also collectives that are not unified by a common tourism motivation. Presenting international examples, the book explores in Part 2 the group culture of a range of tourist tribes by describing emerging tourism micro-segments, identifying shared identities, and analyzing their collective mechanisms.