Tourist Studies

http://tou.sagepub.com Adventure tourism: The freedom to play with reality

Maurice J. Kane and Hazel Tucker Tourist Studies 2004; 4; 217 DOI: 10.1177/1468797604057323 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/3/217

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Tourist Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://tou.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://tou.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://tou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/4/3/217

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

article

ts
tourist studies
2004 sage publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi vol 4(3) 217234 DOI: 10.1177/ 1468797604057323
www.sagepublications.com

Adventure tourism
The freedom to play with reality
Maurice J. Kane

University of Otago, New Zealand

Hazel Tucker

University of Otago, New Zealand

abstract Denitions of adventure tourism and the supposed motivators for the experience of adventure tourism focus on the concepts of risk, danger and adrenaline. Risk and danger relate to a potential for injury and loss. Tourism on the other hand indicates fun, exciting events and safe experience. The focus of this article is to explore the relationship between participants emic experiences and the adventure tourism theories prominent in current literature. This exploration is based on observation of participation, conversations and in-depth interviews with nine tourists on a 14-day white-water kayaking tour of the South Island of New Zealand in February 2002. The interpretation of these tourists experiences, their understandings, and the response to these stories expand the scope and importance of concepts prominent in adventure tourism. Participants play with the reality of their experience through stories of freedom, identity and status. keywords adventure tourism emic experience experience stories kayaking freedom play reality

Introduction
With a few strokes I was an oars length a spears length from the panicked animals [migrating Caribou on the coast of northern Canada]. I could see moisture on their noses, watch the muscles in their shoulders, feel the splash of saltwater as they ran past. In my imagination I was a Sioux riding bareback among stampeding bison; I was chasing mammoth toward a cliff with aming torches; I was in my sealskin kayak, hunting caribou. But in reality I was a tourist, so I backed away to keep my camera dry and took pictures. (Turk, 1998: 104)

This short extract demonstrates some of the ways an adventure experience can be lived, remembered, and storied. Jon Turks concluding reality that he was a tourist is an anomaly considering that this passage appears in an autobiography

217

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

218

tourist studies 4:3

focused on his life as an adventurer. Attempting to kayak round Cape Horn, rowing the Canadian Arctics Northwest Passage, dog sledding or sea kayaking across Bafn Bay between Canada and Greenland, would be considered by most as the experiences of an adventurer, not a tourist. Turk highlights the ambiguous relationship between the individuals experiences of touristic adventure, and how others understand the stories they present of these experiences. Inuential in others understandings is the risk element of adventure, which is central to denitions and marketed presentations of adventure tourism. The focus of this article is the exploration of the relationship between the lived experience of adventure tourists and the ideas of adventure tourism prominent in current literature.Walle (1997) has already suggested that the denitions of adventure tourism, derived from risk-centred recreational models, are inadequate in describing the experience of adventure tourism.This is a reasonable critique given that risk is dened as the potential to lose something of value, while tourism is correlated to achieving a safe experience (Martin and Priest, 1986; Bauman, 1996).Would tourists pay for an adventure experience of risk if the potential to lose were the only or dominant feature? The purpose of this article is to address these issues by focusing on the emic experience of participants on a two-week white-water kayaking tour of the South Island of New Zealand.The marketed highlight of the tour was two days of experiencing the prestigious, helicopter-accessed kayaking (heli-kayaking) on the West Coast, a kayaking environment usually reserved for the professional or expert amateur kayakers due to the remote access and kayaking difculty. The nine tourist participants were all citizens of the United States of America, welleducated, high-earning professionals with considerable package adventure travel experience. An interpretation of the participants lived experience and stories will be presented, and as Jon Turk did at the beginning of this introduction, it will demonstrate how they negotiate the experience of simultaneously being adventurers and tourists.The interpretation will explore their freedom and constraints in playing with their experience stories.The storied images of the tour participants inuenced how others would perceive this experience, how adventure tourism is perceived, and how the participants wish to be perceived in the future. Before moving on to the case itself, it is useful to situate this adventure tour, albeit briey, within the historical context of adventure travel and tourism.

From adventure to tourism

As its semantic origins indicate, the word travel was derived from an experience of painful or laborious effort (Tulloch, 1995: 1651). Historically, travel involved venturing into the unknown, uncertain of return or the challenges that would be encountered.The growth of travel, and travel for pleasure, was stimulated by the reduction of uncertainty, initially from explorers accounts but signicantly in Europe through the published route guides and serialized publications of the

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

ruling elite on their Grand Tours. By 1800, participants in this formulaic travel were of the new genus: the tourist (Black, 1985; Hibbert, 1987). The 1800s saw the commercialization and packaging of travel with tourists not only including the ruling elite, but also intellectuals and even manual workers. Role distinction was demanded; those not wishing to be of the genus tourist sought to be associated with the original genus travellers. Travellers went further, to more exotic places, for longer, and to participate in some activity (Buzard, 1993). From these initial stages tour operators sought to provide the environment and experience their clients desired.These early pleasure tourists (or adventure travellers) followed Burton and Livingston to Africa, as todays adventure tourists follow Hillary and Tenzing to the top of Mt Everest and Admunsen, Scott and Peary to the Poles. The saturation of information about the previously distant unknown, coupled with technologies to react to and manage the uncertainties of nature have mitigated the scope of the challenge and adventure inherent in travel.Technological advances in transportation have reduced time spent in the act of travelling and increased the comfort levels. The physical act of travelling, especially in long-haul air travel, has become commonplace tourism experience while adventure is associated with destination experiences, the activities or events at the destination.With the travel aspect now relatively safe the challenge has become to control the risk and discomforts in adventure activities. As Bauman (1996) suggests: In the tourist world the strange is tame, domesticated and no longer frightens; shocks come in a package deal with safety (p. 29). The management of these safe shocks requires the operators of package adventure tours to restrict and guide the activities and tourist. Comparatively, adventure tourism as an academic focus attracted little attention until the early 1990s. The early tourism theorists, such as Boorstin (1961/1964) and MacCannell (1976/1999) focused on the mass tourist and structural meta-themes, be it the experience of a pseudo-event or the search for authenticity in modern life.A theoretical focus and differentiation developed in research between the contrived experience of the mass tourist and the more authentic experience of the traveller (adventure tourist). There have since been a plethora of conceptual models, mostly focused on the traveller (the adventure tourist who goes further, to more exotic places for a purpose) pursuing an experience quest for the sacred, the other centre, meaning, values, romantic gaze, pre-commodity whole or serendipity (Cohen, 1979; Meyersohn, 1981; Graburn, 1983; Przeclawski, 1985; Urry, 1990; Selwyn, 1996; Tucker, 2003). These theorists, however, did not provide the tourism eld with a denition of the adventure tourist or adventure tourism. The most prominent denitions were derived from research in the eld of recreation. Within the eld of recreation, especially in the 1980s, recreational models were developed where recreation experience involving adventure was correlated to the experience of risk (Meier et al., 1980; Ewert, 1985, 1989; Martin and Priest, 1986; Ewert and Hollenhurst, 1989). The positive valuation of risk

219

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

220

tourist studies 4:3

and danger, in effect the potential to lose something of value, was seen as what differentiated adventure recreation from other leisure experiences (Brannan et al., 1992). The inuence of adventure recreation theory is indicated in Halls (1992: 143) statement that adventure tourism was a commercial activity categorized by the deliberate seeking of risk and danger. He dened adventure tourism as:
A broad spectrum of outdoor touristic activities, often commercialized and involving an interaction with the natural environment away from the participants home range and containing elements of risk; in which the outcome is inuenced by the participant, setting, and management of the touristic experience. (p. 143)

Halls denition appears to weave the terms commercialization, management, distance from home, and touristic through a generic denition of adventure recreation, retaining risk as the central experience element. As in many areas of tourism there is no denitive denition of adventure tourism, but many subsequent denitions have retained the centrality of elements of risk through active outdoors participation in wilderness or exotic, away from home locations (Sung et al., 1997; Millington et al., 2001; Swarbrooke et al., 2003). The dominant focus on risk in adventure recreation, and one would suggest also in adventure tourism, obscures some of the other experiences of those involved, such as problem solving, testing skills, meaningful social interaction, stress management, fun, exhilaration, excitement, and accomplishment (Mitchell, 1983;Vester, 1987; Robinson, 1992; Ewert, 1994).Allen Ewert (1994) a recreational theorist, went so far as to suggest that risk taking per se may play a less central role in explaining why individuals choose to engage in risk [adventure] recreation (p. 5). However, risk remains a central tenet of adventure tourism denitions, predicating that subsequent adventure tourism research has focused on this element (Berno et al., 1996; Cloke and Perkins, 1998; Morgan, 1998, 2000; Fluker and Turner, 2000). Of note is that these theoretical denitions of adventure tourism originate from the outdoor recreation area focused on its potential negative outcomes. Adventure experience, however, appears to have been an integral component in the development of travel and a prominent component in distinguishing tourist experience and products. The contextual setting of this article is within the main tenets of many denitions of adventure tourism, being of tourists participation in active outdoors (wilderness) activity.

Is risk that important?

Two articles in particular have inuenced the focus and structure of the present studys research by seeking to expand the conceptual models for the experience of adventure tourism. The rst was Alf Walles (1997) article Pursuing Risk or Insight which looked outside the recreational eld and drew on the North American transcendental movement, inspired and championed by Ralph

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

Emerson (180382) and Henry Thoreau (181762).Walle (1997) suggested that the experience of adventure tourism, set within a natural environment, was a quest for personal insight or enlightenment (p. 280). The insight was to be gained not by facing or overcoming of risks in nature but in the experience of nature in itself. The enlightenment allowed people to discover themselves, to learn what is real and truly important. Walle suggests that Thoreaus nonconquering experiencing of nature was in search of the elusive insight that could not be obtained in the mundane work-a-day world of civilization (p. 272). Insight appears as a similar concept to the exclusive authenticity, which those alienated in modern society seek through the experience of tourism (MacCannell, 1976/1999). In Walles idea of the non-challenging experience of nature, the risk element was far from a central tenet. Although Walles article demonstrates the potential for a different theoretical interpretation, Weber (2001) suggests that insight, as risk, is just one of multiple features that could add to the understanding of the experience of adventure tourism. Weber (2001) argued that the denitions and research until that point had been centred on outdoor adventure recreation, ignoring the tourism aspect, especially the experience of the overland traveller. She proffers that overland travellers experience adventure, if dened by the traits of risk, uncertainty and insight, yet are not involved in outdoor recreational activities, just basically sightseeing.Weber describes multiple features, contexts and tourist-specic factors that inuence the potential experience of adventure tourism. Given this complexity, the research direction Weber suggests is a focus on the emic or individual perspective of the tourist.This approach, she suggests, would allow for a more complete understanding of adventure tourism. Emic in this sense ascribes value to the individuals experience, even if the researcher or outsider would prescribe a different value to that experience.The researcher seeks the tourists ideas, thoughts and expressions through both communicated understanding and observation of the experience. Interpretation of others experience is an ambiguous art, with a variety of methods and dilemmas that will be discussed in the following section. Certain leisure, sports and recreational studies, which have included but were not focused on their tourism contexts, have explored the participants experience.These ethnographic studies of climbing, rugby, skydiving, windsurng and endurance racing draw on a wide range of theoretical frameworks (Donnelly and Young, 1988; Green and Chalip, 1988; Celsi et al., 1993;Wheaton, 2000; Kay and Laberge, 2002a, 2002b). Their experience interpretations present concepts of identity formation, social worlds, sub-cultures, and activity career stages.The focus of these studies was on the images and stories of participants. Of note in Donnelly and Youngs (1988) research was that the participants stories of identity were constructed for two distinct groups:members of the larger society and members of the sub-culture [activity social world] (p. 224). What both Weber and Walle and subsequent research in sport, leisure and recreation have provided is innovative ways to advance the understanding of

221

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

222

tourist studies 4:3

adventure tourism and its experience, especially when activity focused. This articles adventure tourism case, the tourist participants, and the methods used will now be described.

The context, the tourists and the methods

Central to this studys context is tourist participation in an outdoors recreational activity, in this case, white-water kayaking, from an intermediate to advanced level, with novel helicopter access to remote wilderness areas.The tour was conducted in the South Island of New Zealand, over a two-week period in February 2002. It was an all-inclusive tour (with food/accommodation/equipment) for nine clients (plus myself as researcher) staffed by two kayaking guides and two cooks/drivers. It followed a circular route from Christchurch, the largest South Island city over two-thirds of the island, travelling approximately 1500 km. Kayaking between two and eight hours was undertaken on 11 of the 14 days, in 13 different river locations. The marketed and central focus of the tour was the prestigious helicopteraccessed kayaking (heli-kayaking) on the West Coast, although only two days in the middle of the tour were scheduled for heli-kayaking. The prestige of helikayaking comes from adventure videos and articles that presented the West Coast of the South Island as the hottest extreme kayaking destination on the planet (Canard, 2000: 15). This image can be attributed to three factors: the quality of the kayaking, the novelty of helicopter access, and endorsement of the elite kayakers featured in these articles and videos (Kane, 2002). The international kayaking elite, in New Zealand for the world freestyle kayaking championship in 1999 followed New Zealand kayakers and explored many wilderness rivers on the West Coast. It was the exploits and images of the kayaking elite that established the West Coast as a prestigious kayaking destination. As history and Grant (2001) have suggested, activities-focused adventure tourists often follow in the well-published footsteps of adventure heroes. The nine tour participants two females and seven males were all citizens of the United States of America (USA), with seven residents in the state of California, one in Georgia and one in Florida.They ranged in age from 32 years to 55 years, with three under 35 and ve between 42 and 48. They had all attended some form of tertiary education (university), and they would be correctly described as being in the higher socioeconomic strata of USA society. There was a wide range of kayaking experience and skill levels. One participant had limited kayaking experience outside one previous kayaking tour, while one had kayaked at a national level and been involved in kayaking for 35 years. Excluding the least experienced, all participants kayaked regularly in the northern hemisphere summer and were either in an organized kayaking club or had a wide circle of kayaking friends. All had been on this type of kayaking tour before, with four of the participants having been on over ve such tours. Five participants had also been in 2000 on a tour together and planned to do

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

another international tour together in 20045.They also had participated in one domestic week-long kayaking trip together in 2001. They regularly kayaked with local kayaking friends and within their clubs. In terms of distance travelled and nancial costs (approx. US$4500) this tour was signicantly greater than most participants previous tours and indicated a major investment in kayaking.

223

Methods of interpretation: art and action The participants investment in this tour was in anticipation of the future lived experience of adventure tourism, an experience that was to be a continuum of ephemeral moments. Their understanding of this experience was both constructed in anticipation, in lived action and, subsequently, in descriptive images and word stories.The stories of understanding are not perfect reections of lived experience. Lived experience, Crotty (1998: 43) would suggest, is pregnant with potential meaning which has been interpreted in stories.There is a recognition of the individuals perspective of the experience yet this is referenced to shared understanding (social constructs), practices, language and so forth (Schwandt, 2000: 197). The participants understandings and the research interpretation were and are dynamic, no one true experience or interpretation of adventure tourism was waiting to be discovered. Interpretation is more than a process, it is an art, in which the researcher has the central crystallizing role of transforming participants lived experiences and understandings into, in this case, this article (Richardson, 2000). The interpretation or voice of this article indicates that choices were made, experiences presented, others discarded, in the process of voicing a lived experience (Coffey, 1999).The value of this article its voiced interpretation is in the domain of the readers. Critical to a positive valuation is the transparency of the research choices, the sophistication of conceptual understandings and the application of methods that inform the interpretation. This articles interpretation was developed from a strategy of inquiry that sought to stud[y] behaviour from inside a system, focused on the participants emic experience, which was both personal and shared (Weber, 2001: 372).The primary method for this was observation of participation, which facilitated and was complemented by the methods of unstructured conversations and more structured individual interviews.The rst author, and primary researcher in this case, had the local knowledge and skills of a guide, often participating like a tourist, yet focused on research. He was introduced to the participants as a researcher. His previous experience was from a professional perspective, as kayaking instructor, video participant and guide. He retained a high level of kayaking skill, close personal friendships with the elite hero kayakers and experience of many prestigious kayaking destinations. His understanding of the kayaking social world was more complex than that solely gained through his researcher role. The research involved travelling with the participants, sharing accommodation, meals, social events and kayaking rivers. Observation involved noting

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

224

tourist studies 4:3

expressions, actions, non-actions and comments of individuals and recording these in a note book, usually at the end of each day, but also frequently as things transpired. Conversations were similarly noted down. The more structured method of individual interviews was conducted and audio-taped at convenient times through the tour, from day three to day 12.The interviews, as Maykut and Morehouse (1994) advised, were conversation[s] with a purpose. . . [and with a] format consisting of a detailed set of questions and probes (pp. 79, 83). The questions sought the participants understandings of adventure and adventure tourism, phrased in relation to this tour experience but realizing that past experiences would inuence understandings. The interviews allowed ideas and thoughts to be explored, especially in the probing section, where the interviewee often asked questions. In this way it was a stimulating process where knowledge was constructed in collaboration. Direct participants quotes from these interactions are prominent in the following sections (presented in inverted commas) and signicant in this interpretation. In the use of these methods and the presence of the researcher contributed to the participants experience, their conversations and their process of understanding.The participants experiences were contrasted to other participants on the tour, the guides, and the researcher, in a continual process of understanding. The interpretation and analysis of information was a continual and intrinsic process throughout the tour, yet much of this articles interpretative formulation was from transcribed notes and audio-tapes subsequent to the tour. This posttour analysis involved repeated readings and comparison of participants interviews, which were related to eld notes of conversations, observations and memory.Through this process, themes of understanding and abstract constructs were identied. It was an art of choice, like nding meaning in poetry, where meanings were both found and discarded (Rose and Webb, 1998). Like the rivers on which the tour was focused, there were times of confusing rapids, bends in direction and periods of calm, where the themes of understanding were claried, diminished, expanded or transformed. The interpretation of this lived experience presents a complex reality,somewhere in the middle between that of the man [women] in the street and that of the philosopher (Berger and Luckmann, 1967: 14).This article presents the way things were understood by participants, yet these understandings are really the sense the researcher has made, the voice given to this interpretation of experience (Crotty, 1998).This voice is focused on the interpretation of the nine tour participants lived experiences of adventure tourism.

The lived experience of the tour

With the West Coast heli-kayak rivers as the pinnacle of the tour, the experience ow was segmented into three sections, anticipation, pinnacle experience and post-pinnacle reection. Anticipation is themed to the initial period of the tour as participants established themselves and their tour identities.The pinnacle

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

focus of heli-kayaking dominated the middle of the tour and is themed to participants understandings of adventure.The latter period of the tour experience is focused on participants storied images reecting an adventure difference. In the following sections the direct statements of participants will be presented in the text in inverted commas.

225

Just a bunch of kayakers Caras description of the group to an outsider, as just a bunch of kayakers, reects the focus of much of the social discussion, and the currency of identity formation within the group. Kayaking experience and knowledge provided the currency of identity formation within the group. Discussion and comparison to known home environments, the kayaking lore from videos and magazines and previous trip experiences dominated. There was general comment as to a new rivers size, colour or volume or comparisons, such as Roberts comment, that looks a lot like northern California, or Shanes,that river looks just like down in Chile. The discussion focused on previous tours and the potential of this tour.This corresponds to Schmidts (1979) research into guided package tours, where she found that although tourists often nd themselves in conversations with each other about home . . . A more acceptable topic of conversation among tourists is their experience as tourists (p. 461). The discussion of signiers of general social status was initially absent, as Bruce expressed: how did I do this trip with you for three days and not know what you do [profession]?. This behaviour is indicative of what Foster (1986) described as a short-lived society where a strong common interest, limited time, and a packaged daily routine, limit broader social interaction. The participants dened their intergroup identity and status based on the common focus of kayaking. There was a unique language, phrasing and understanding within the groups interactions as participants verbally and visually presented themselves as kayakers. Initial replies to locals questions often had appendage of were here to kayak, supported by displays of logo distinguishing clothes, hats, bags and the tour van topped by kayaking equipment (Celsi et al., 1993). The visual display of kayaking identity differentiated this tour group from others and highlighted their commonality. An indication of the importance of displaying the kayaking identity was in the initial rst-day activity, which was a visit to a local kayak shop to purchase New Zealand kayaking items (Donnelly and Young, 1988; Elsrud, 2001). The kayak identity was also presented through stories of past experience, many relating to relationships with famous guides and kayaking heroes, on previous tours or skills courses. Shanes experience of seeking out skills then progressing through commercial kayak tours provided a typical example:
We realized we were pretty crappy boaters, so we decided to go take some lessons. We went down to Nantahala [a Tennessee-based kayak centre and school]. We went, took the beginner, intermediate and advanced courses at Nantahala for three

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

226

tourist studies 4:3

different years and that opened up the South East . . . I [then] kind of worked my way up from the intermediate trip to the advanced trip down there [Costa Rica].

Shane went on to describe the social environment, where stories of experiencing prestigious rivers and rapids or persevering in difcult situations were intrinsic to the kayaking identity:
Kayakers like to sit around and talk about where have you been? What rapids have you done? What, you know, near escape from the jaws of death have you encountered? Its part of the experience!

The group discussions and the corresponding identity representations presented were physically legitimized on the river. The initial river experiences provided little challenge, and correspondingly had limited guide input. Although the guides and drivers coordinated logistics, with the group focus on kayaking, the social environment, inclusive of guides and drivers, was as Cara described just a bunch of kayakers.There were unique pre-kayaking routes, such as greeting the rivers, warm-ups and gear checks and, at the appropriate time, a joking banter on individuals skills, performance or lack of either. Similar social behaviours have been observed in both focused tour groups and in many sports, leisure and recreation social worlds or sub-cultures (Foster, 1986; Donnelly and Young, 1988; Green and Chalip, 1988; Lyng, 1990; Celsi et al., 1993;Wheaton, 2000; Kay and Laberge, 2002a, 2002b). The initial lived experience of this tour was focused on the social dynamic of the group, a group on a package tour, confined by the routines of a shortlived society but sharing in the unique ethos of a kayaking focused.They were expressing their sub-culture identity as kayakers and establishing their intragroup relationships, anticipating the focal challenge of this tour, the adventurous heli-kayaking.

Adventure tourism as I understand it is . . . The participants understood adventure as a spectrum of experiences from routine to extreme.The middle period of the tour in which the two heli-kayaking rivers were kayaked was anticipated as providing the extreme component of the tour experience. On their spectrum of experience they were kayakers having an adventure experience, more extreme and close to the edge than routine. The heli-kayaking rivers of the West Coast epitomized this, the hottest extreme kayaking destination and the pinnacle of their adventure.These two heli-kayaking rivers differentiated them from tourists, from adventure tourists, and from kayakers at home. They were travelling adventure kayakers. It was paradoxical then that this was also the kayaking experience during which they were not just a bunch of kayakers, but distinctly tourists controlled by the tour guides. A paradox inherent in the concept of adventure tourism. It was at this pinnacle of the tour experience that the interpretations of adventure and adventure tourism were most observably delineated.The partici-

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

pants evaluated their adventure experience in relation to features such as newness, unknown, challenge, risk, participation, success, excitement, fun and play. Within their social world of kayaking, participation in the new and unknown increased the challenge and the positive extreme status.The challenge was negotiating the river rapids and their own condence in success. Robert likened it to piecing the puzzles together, like a chess game, while Cara saw the challenge as working up the courage to do it. On the heli-kayaking rivers the guides managed the challenge, reducing uncertainty in the unknown and consequently the extreme status. The tours social norm of all being travelling kayakers was replaced with demarcated roles. On the heli-kayaking rivers guides pieced the puzzle together, directed who could paddle specic rapids and required participants to follow set routes. As amateur kayakers and tourists the participants deferred to the professional guides. It was not the lack of skill, but rather the tourism context that required this challenge management. Bruce commented: we like trips like this, but I do think it, it makes it relatively tame as adventure goes to have somebody who can tell you for every rapid, go right, go left. Several of the other experienced participants agreed but considered their preference to be for a safe experience and the guides control guaranteed this outcome. A feature recognized in Schmidts (1979) subtitle for package tourism as insulated adventure or in Baumans (1996) more contemporary understanding of the tourism product: shocks come in a package deal with safety (p. 29). As Cara concisely describes: somehow it seems safer to do adventure tourism than it does to do adventure. As Hall (1992: 143) stated, commercialization of adventure recreation required the management of the touristic experience. Providing the tourist experience with the package deal of safety was a signicant component of the guides role, especially on the more challenging rivers. Some of the participants openly recognized this management process, the reduced scope this provided for challenge and experience of adventure, with its inherent potential for failure or loss. As Allan commented of the guides: theyd be irresponsible if they put us in a risk position. Yet the consensus was that the nature of their package adventure tour provided rather than moderated the adventure.The package tour provided the mechanism and logistics to experience adventure kayaking. As Cara commented:it seems easier if somebody plans the logistics.They know where they are going . . . they take us there. The package tour allowed Shane to t a lot of fun into a short time period and in Rachels opinion, freed her from do[ing] any preparation, or anything myself. Someone just taking care of us, it just makes it easy. It was the participation in the activity of kayaking that distinguished their experience as adventure. Eric saw kayaking as his medium if you will, to experience adventure while essentially a tourist . . . a high skill medium . . . [involving] instantaneous and constant decision making about management of risk [uncertainty]. Many of the adventure activities other tourists participated in, such as bungee jumping and scenic ights, were viewed, as Eric critiqued, as

227

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

228

tourist studies 4:3

having little personal control. As a kayaker, Bruce felt he was not totally putting himself in someone elses control: you have choice. There was agreement on the importance of the intent, style and the purpose of the tour. It inferred they must be adventurous people. Even if their experience of heli-kayaking was controlled and moderated, it was still the pinnacle of their tour, validating their understanding of themselves as travelling adventure kayakers. David expressed the strength of kayaking ethos and sub-cultural identity: just the people that youre with create the adventure. The structure of their tour provided the freedom to participate in new, exciting kayaking, while the kayaking itself provided freedom in personal control. The participants discounted the organized structure and packaged nature of their tour, highlighting instead the freedom and novelty of kayaking. It was a freedom in relation to kayaking peers at home, unable to experience this prestigious destination and a freedom in relation to tourists not adventuring through kayaking. It provided, as Elsrud (2001) had suggested, a freedom that valued through difference, a freedom to be a travelling adventure kayaker. Once the pinnacle experience of heli-kayaking had been lived, the nal period of the tour was focused on the participants stories of their experience, a freedom to contrast and reect an adventure difference.

Reecting an adventure difference The concept of difference unique, distinct and separate was integral to the participants understanding of themselves, their kayaking social world and their experience on this adventure tour. The descriptive adventure tourist was not one the participants identied with, as Rachels negative tone and phrasing in describing adventure tourists demonstrates: a bunch of middle-class, middleaged people out somewhere they wouldnt normally get to go.Yet this description was representative of the tour participants. A feature Rachel jokingly acknowledged with a like us shortly after the previous comment. The kayaking activity and the prestige of the tour destination provided the perspective of adventure difference. It was a difference valued and contrasted against two distinct audiences: their peers in the kayaking social world and non-kayakers (Donnelly and Young, 1988; Green and Chalip, 1988; Wheaton, 2000). As Phil commented: I dont look at myself as, you know, as an adventurer, ah . . . but I know because of where I go and what I do I would be looked upon in that way. Phil was commenting on the perspective non-kayakers have of him, yet as a kayaker he was not adventurous. As Cara commented considering her kayaking peers perspective:I wouldnt say that they think of us as adventurers, oh no, they think were lucky. Within their kayaking culture, differentiation was constructed from the mythical prestige of the destination of the West Coast of the South Island.The image of this destination provided status, as Shane described as he anticipated returning to his kayaking club:everybodys antenna goes up and they start grilling you about what it was like. The images participants were retaining on their digital

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

cameras and the stories they were already telling perpetuated the destinations prestigious images. Interestingly, Eric, Shane and Bruce, who were more experienced and already had kayaking status, did not so freely compare their experience to the prestige myth.The heli-kayaking rivers were at very low ows and the sections kayaked only required a moderate skill level, they were not the river sections that had provided the West Coast with such kayaking status.Yet Shane indicated how novelty also differentiated them in the kayaking culture:I mean Helicopter Kayaking, Ive never had a helicopter pick me up and drop me off on a creek run before. The relationship between novelty and kayaking knowledge provided an increased freedom for the stories to be presented to the general public. In contemplating how their stories would be perceived by non-kayakers, participants concurred with Roberts comments that people cant grasp why I do what I do . . . just cant understand it. This lack of understanding was displayed in how the participants thought they were viewed by non-kayakers:
Oh they think Im insane. (Phil) They . . . like, think Im crazy. (Rachel) Oh my work peers think Im as nutty as a fruitcake. (Eric) I think they view it as a very dangerous sport and some wild streak in me. (Shane) Non-kayaking peers see it as risk and a danger. (Cara)

229

These descriptors were considered positively by participants. It differentiated them and characterized their identity and association with a distinct social world (Celsi et al., 1993; Kay and Laberge, 2002a, 2002b). As Rachel explained: they say Oh yeah Rachel went to such in such, oh she was stupid to do that . . . but you know she went! They want to live vicariously through me. The participants stories to non-kayakers are of the traveller, providing images of experiencing uncertainty, danger and risk. In the discourse of tourism differentiation as a traveller is valued.The stories for both kayaking peers and non-kayakers were not to be stories of a package tour.They were stories that focused on kayaking and especially on the pinnacle of West Coast heli-kayaking. They were stories that authenticated the anticipated and prestige myth of the destination, and were constructed around a narrative of adventure. They were stories of travellers who, as Phil autobiographically phrased it, take the chance and go out and do something different. They were stories that were just forming in the latter stages of the tour but were to be the memories retold in the future.

Play, freedom and reality

The participants memories and stories, as with this interpretation, will have continued, changed and developed after the conclusion of the lived experience.

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

230

tourist studies 4:3

Three interwoven themes were identied as central to this interpretation; play, freedom and reality.The participants had played the game of tourism, there was a freedom in the storied image of this experience and these storied images presented their reality of the experience. The rst theme of this interpretation is encapsulated in the term play:
Its play for adults. (Shane) Like being a kid again, and playing a game. (Allan) Adventure is the freedom of being a child at play. (Robert)

Play provided the ability to imagine, playing with their tour experience, the roles played and the images presented. Feifer (1986: 270) had described this aspect of the late-20th century tourist, the post-tourist, as playful behaviour. The aspect of play was further theorized by Urry (1990) as behaviour within tourism [as] a game, or rather a whole series of games with multiple texts and no single, authentic tourist experience (p. 100). This idea of a playful game did not have all the freedom Robert suggests. For a tourist, like a child at play, there are constraints, rules and notions of a successful game. It was an experience played out within the context of the game of tourism where fun, excitement and safety are the foundations of success. These are expected experiences in tourism, the creativity of the type of game or style of play differentiate this tourist success. This was a game of adventure tourism where the creative playfulness of the participants was in playing adventure roles.As travelling adventure kayakers, within the insulation structure of the package tour, differentiated themselves from other tourists.This playful game of differentiating, yet retaining the foundations of tourist experience, is at the core of niche tourism products such as this tour. Participants sought multiple experiences; package tourist, kayaker, adventurer and traveller, in the roles they played.The playing of these roles facilitated a freedom in the storied images to be presented in the future. In the storied images of this tour the participants freedom was in what was told and what was left untold. In the roles they had played they could not relive the authentic experience of their heroes, the elite kayakers. They were always within the context of a package tour, although playing the roles of travelling adventure kayakers. Their freedom came in discounting the packaged nature of their tour experience, the controlled routine and limiting social interaction. Their stories instead were emphasizing the participation, challenge and control of kayaking. It was a freedom that differentiated them from the ordinary and routine of tourist experience. It even differentiated them from the tourists who adventured through bungee jumping or rafting. Through kayaking the participants portrayed themselves as active, purposeful, in control and free adventurers. Yet this portrayal could be misunderstood as crazy, insane, [and] extremely dangerous by non-kayakers. It was mainly in their kayaking social world that the

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

kayakers freedom in storying their experience around the sport was valued and appreciated. The prestigious heli-kayaking of the West Coast enhanced their kayaking identity, their commitment to its ethos and their status as kayakers.The participants freedom came in being Feifers (1986) resolutely realistic tourists. They understood the game of tourism and in playing gained the freedom to promote the aspects of their tour experience that enhanced their social standing.The structure of the package tour experience is not important if the differentiating adventure image or prestigious heli-kayaking are dominant in stories of the tour experience.The participants had negotiated the tourist role, freeing their stories of experience from the theoretical realities that contrast package and adventure experience. In the combination of package adventure tourism the theoretically interpreted potential of adventure and package tourism experience contrast. Adventure implies valued, authentic, uncertain experience, while package tourism implies a controlled, insulated, ordinary experience.The experience was lived, a real experience of adventure tourism for the participants. It was an experience lived within a package tour, directed and controlled by the guides, yet they strived to diminish the appearance of this structure. The participants storied realities authenticated the destination and their kayaking adventure heroes, yet they did not claim to be authentic adventurers. Each participant had a different real lived experience and multiple storied images of its reality which will change and develop with additional experience and each re-telling. The reality of their tour experience was in comparison to others experience, what was strange and familiar, the known and unknown. The audience of these storied images will authorize and authenticate the reality of the participants tour experience.The importance of this peer-authorized reality will reect the participants commitment to the social world in which it is authorized. The participants experience of this package adventure tour was a negotiation of the playful game of tourism, in which there is a freedom to story the experience of reality in comparison to others tourist experience.

231

Conclusion
Adventure tourism is now, as it possibly was in the initial expansive growth of modern tourism, a signier of who you are, who you would like to be and who you are not. The package adventure tour provides the opportunity to be, or appear to be, adventurous within the packaged safety of being a guided tourist. At its core the experience allows for the construction or importantly in this case, reafrmation of identity, through presenting stories of experience. The audience of these stories will see them as tourist stories in contrast to normal life; differentiating tourist stories in contrast to others tourist experiences or kayaking stories of belonging that afrm status in the kayaking social world. The interpretation of this article is that participants in package adventure tours are free within a touristic discourse to playfully construct experience

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

232

tourist studies 4:3

stories of reality. Indeed in contemporary adventure tourism the niche package adventure provides participants with experience journeys in which there is potential to choose identity, or in other words, a freedom to play with reality.
re f e re nc e s Bauman, Z. (1996) From Pilgrim to Tourist: Or a Short History of Identity, pp. 1836 in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity. London: SAGE Publications. Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press. Berno,T., K. Moore, D. Simmons and V. Hart (1996) The Nature of Adventure Tourism Experience in Queenstown, New Zealand, Australian Leisure 7(2): 215. Black, J. (1985) The British and the Grand Tour. Dover: Croom Helm. Boorstin, D. J. (1961/1964) The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America. New York: Harper & Row. Brannan, L., C. Condello, N. Struckum, N.Vissers and S. Priest (1992) Public Perception of Risk in Recreational Activities, Journal of Applied Recreation Research 17(2): 14457. Buzard, J. (1993) The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature and the Ways to Culture: 18001918. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canard, H. (2001) Tourism, Conservation and Recreation, pp. 1521 in K. Lloyd Managing New Zealands Wildlands. Rotoiti: Federation of Mountain Clubs of New Zealand. Celsi, R. L., L. R. Rose and T.W. Leigh (1993) An Exploration of High-risk Leisure Consumption through Skydiving, Journal of Consumer Research 20: 123. Cloke, P. and H. C. Perkins (1998) Craking the Canyon with the Awesome Foursome: Representations of Adventure Tourism in New Zealand, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16: 185218. Coffey, A. (1999) The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity. London: SAGE Publications. Cohen, E. (1979) A Phenomenology of Tourist Experience, The Journal of the British Sociological Association 13(1): 179201. Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. Donnelly, P. and K.Young (1988) The Construction and Conrmation of Identity in Sport Subcultures, Sociology of Sport Journal 5: 22340. Elsrud,T. (2001) Risk Creation in Travelling, Annals of Tourism Research 28(3): 597617. Ewert, A.W. (1985) Why People Climb:The Relationship of Participant Motives and Experience Level to Mountaineering, Journal of Leisure Research 17(3): 24150. Ewert, A.W. (1989) Outdoor Adventure Pursuits: Foundations, Models and Theories. Columbus, OH: Publishing Horizons. Ewert, A.W. (1994) Playing the Edge: Motivation and Risk Taking in a High Altitude Wilderness-like Environment, Environment and Behaviour 26(1): 324. Ewert, A.W. and S. Hollenhurst (1989) Testing the Adventure Model: Empirical Support for a Model of Risk Recreation Participation, Journal of Leisure Research 21: 12439. Feifer, M. (1986) Tourism in History: From Imperial Rome to the Present. New York: Stein & Day.

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

Kane and Tucker Adventure tourism

Fluker, M. R. and L.W.Turner (2000) Needs, Motivations, and Expectations of Commercial White-water Rafting Experience, Journal of Travel Research 38(4): 3809. Foster, G. M. (1986) South Seas Cruise: A Case Study of a Short-lived Society, Annals of Tourism Research 13: 21538. Graburn, N. (1983) The Anthropology of Tourism, Annals of Tourism Research 10(1): 933. Grant, D. (2001) Adventure Tourism: A Journey of the Mind, pp. 16670 in L. Roberts and D. Hall (eds) Rural Tourism and Recreation: Principles and Practice. New York: CABI Publishing. Green, D. C. and L. Chalip (1988) Sport Tourism as the Celebration of Subculture, Annals of Tourism Research 25(2): 27591. Hall, C. M. (1992) Adventure, Sport and Health Tourism, pp. 14158 in B.Weiler and C. M. Hall (eds) Special Interest Tourism. London: Belhaven. Hibbert, C. (1987) The Grand Tour. London: Methuen. Kane, M. J. (2002) Niche Image:The Touchstone to Destination Image, pp. 1224 in W. G. Croy (ed.) International Tourism Student Conference: New Zealand Tourism Hospitality Research. Rotorua: School of Tourism and Hospitality,Waiariki Institute of Technology. Kay, J. and S. Laberge (2002a) The New Corporate Habitus in Adventure Racing, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(1): 1736. Kay, J. and S. Laberge (2002b) Mapping the Field of AR: Adventure Racing and Bourdieus Concept of Field, Sociology of Sport Journal 19(1): 2546. Lyng, S. (1990) Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking, American Journal of Sociology 95(4): 85186. MacCannell, D. (1976/1999) The Tourist: A New Theory in the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press. Martin, P. and S. Priest (1986) Understanding Adventure Experience, AdventureEducation 3(1): 1821. Maykut, P. and R. Morehouse (1994) Beginning Qualitative Research: A Philosophic and Practical Guide. London:The Falmer Press. Meier, J. F.,T.W. Morash and G. E.Welton (1980) High-adventure Outdoor Pursuits: Organisation and Leadership. Columbus, OH: Publishing Horizons. Meyersohn, R. (1981) Tourism as a Socio-cultural Phenomenon: Research Perspectives. Waterloo: Otium Publications. Millington, K.,T. Locke and A. Locke (2001) Adventure Travel, Travel & Tourism Analyst 4: 6597. Mitchell Jr, R. G. (1983) Mountain Experience:The Psychology and Sociology ofAdventure. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press. Morgan, D. (1998) The Adventure Tourism Experience on Water: Perceptions of Risk and Competence and the Role of the Operator. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand. Morgan, D. (2000) Adventure Tourism Activities in New Zealand: Perceptions and Management of Client Risk, Tourism Recreation Research 25(3): 7989. Przeclawski, K. (1985) The Role of Tourism in Contemporary Culture, The Tourist Review 40: 26. Richardson, L. (2000) Writing: A Method of Inquiry, pp. 92348 in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research.Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

233

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009

234

tourist studies 4:3

Robinson, D.W. (1992) The Risk Recreation Experience: Subjective State Dimensions and the Transferability of Benets, Journal of Applied Recreation Research 17(1): 1236. Rose, K. and C.Webb (1998) Analysing Data: Maintaining Rigour in a Qualitative Study, Qualitative Health Research 8(4): 55662. Schmidt, C. J. (1979) The Guided Tour: Insulated Adventure, Urban Life 7(4): 44167. Schwandt,T. A. (2000) Three Epistemological Stances for Qualitative Inquiry: Interpretivism, Hermeneutics and Social Constructionism, pp. 189214 in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research.Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Selwyn,T. (ed.) (1996) The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism. Chichester:Wiley. Sung, H. H., A. M. Morrison and J.T. OLeary (1997) Denition of Adventure Travel: Conceptual Framework for Empirical Application from the Providers Perspective, Asia Pacic Journal of Tourism Research 1(2): 4767. Swarbrooke, J., C. Beard, S. Leckie and G. Pomfret (2003) Adventure Tourism:The New Frontier. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Tucker, H. (2003) Living with Tourism: Negotiating Identities in a Turkish Village. London: Routledge. Tulloch, S. (ed.) (1995) The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turk, J. (1998) Cold Oceans: Adventures in Kayak, Rowboat, and Dogsled. New York: Harper Collins. Urry, J. (1990) The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: SAGE Publications. Vester, H. G. (1987) Adventure as a Form of Leisure, Leisure Studies 6: 23749. Walle, A. H. (1997) Pursuing Risk or Insight, Annals of Tourism Research 24(2): 26582. Weber, K. (2001) Outdoor Adventure Tourism: A Review of Research Approaches, Annals of Tourism Research 28(2): 36077. Wheaton, B. (2000) Just Do It: Consumption, Commitment, and Identity in the Windsurng Subculture, Sociology of Sport Journal 17: 25474. mauri c e j. kane is a doctorial candidate at the University of Otago with extensive experience in the adventure tourism industry. His research interest is in perspectives of adventure both in the tourist context and also in wider New Zealand society and these perspectives inter-relationship. Address: Department of Tourism, University of Otago, P. O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. [email: kanma614@student.otago.ac.nz] haz e l tuc ke r , also at the University of Otago, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Tourism. Her research interests include tourism and social change, representation and experience, and heritage interpretation. Her latest publications include Living with Tourism: Negotiating Identities in a Turkish Village (2003) and Tourism and PostColonialism (2004). Address: Department of Tourism, University of Otago, P. O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. [email: htucker@business.otago.ac.nz]

Downloaded from http://tou.sagepub.com at Griffith University on December 30, 2009