ABSTRACT
Adventure travel has been developed out of a broader growth of traditional outdoor and wilderness recreation (Ewert 1989). It has broadened its scope and appeal among travelers who want to “experience” a vacation by participating in specific activities (Black and Rutledge 1995; Madrigal 1995; Vellas and Becherel 1995) that are adventure based (Ewert 1987; Hall 1989). According to Sung, Morrison, and O’Leary (1997), the notion of adventure from past leisure and recreation studies can be linked to a tourism perspective in defining adventure travel as “a trip or travel with the specific purpose of activity participation to explore a new experience, often involving perceived risk or controlled
lack of a standard definition to measure the market, it is generally agreed that adventure travel is a newly emerging, fast-growing sector in the tourism industry (Sorensen 1993; Loverseed 1997; Fluker and Turner 2000). A survey of adventure travelers in the United States reports that nearly one-half of U.S. adults, or 98 million people, have taken an adventure trip in the past 5 years (Travel Industry Association of America [TIA] 1998). Similarly, about 45% of Canadian residents engaged in various outdoor adventure activities during their trips in 2001, which was overall ranked as the second most popular type of travel behavior following visiting friends and relatives (Canadian Tourism Commission [CTC] 2002).
